The preS1 surface antigen of hepatitis B virus (HBV) is known to play an important role in the initial attachment of HBV to hepatocytes. We have characterized structural features of the full-length preS1 using heteronuclear NMR methods and discovered that this 119-residue protein is inherently unstructured without a unique tertiary structure under a nondenaturing condition. Yet, combination of various NMR parameters shows that the preS1 contains ''pre-structured'' domains broadly covering its functional domains. The most prominent domain is formed by residues 27-45 and overlaps with the putative hepatocyte-binding domain (HBD) encompassing residues 21-47, within which two welldefined pre-structured motifs, formed by Pro 32 -Ala 36 and Pro 41 -Phe 45 are found. Additional, somewhat less prominent, pre-structured motifs are also formed by residues 11-18, 22-25, 37-40, and 46-50. Overall results suggest that the preS1 is a natively unstructured protein (NUP) whose N-terminal 50 residues, populated with multiple pre-structured motifs, contribute critically to hepatocyte binding.Keywords: hepatitis B virus; preS1; NMR; natively unstructured protein; pre-structured motif Supplemental material: see www.proteinscience.org Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a member of the hepadnaviridae family (Ganem and Varmus 1987;Chisari et al. 1989) that poses a significant health threat to millions of people worldwide, particularly in Africa, Asia, and certain parts of Europe (Fung and Lok 2004;Wright 2006). Whereas HBV infection itself may not appear so fatal as AIDS or SARS chronic hepatitis B infection often develops into more serious symptoms such as cirrhosis, liver failure, and hepatocelluar carcinoma (Blumberg et al. 1989). While successful administration of HBV vaccines led to a significant reduction of HBV-related casualties (Stephenne 1990;Mahoney et al. 1993;Jilg 1998;Poland and Jacobson 2004), emergence of escape mutants or nonresponders to current vaccines argues for attempts to develop vaccines with better efficacy. In addition, more specific anti-HBV therapeutics are needed in order to completely eradicate HBV infection, since nucleoside drugs currently in use for HBV-related symptoms are not HBV specific, often causing side effects or inducing drug resistance. Efforts to discover anit-HBVspecific agents based upon natural products or siRNAs have been met with only partial success (Saag 2006;Shin et al. 2006).Even though it is generally accepted that HBV infection begins with an attachment of HBV surface antigens to a HBV-specific hepatocyte receptor, followed by subsequent entry of viral DNA into hepatocyte (Neurath 3 These authors contributed equally to this work. Reprint requests to: Kyou-Hoon Han, Molecular Cancer Research Center, Division of Molecular Therapeutics, KRIBB, Daejeon 305-806, Korea; e-mail: khhan600@kribb.re.kr; fax: 82-42-860-4259.Abbreviations: HBV, hepatitis B virus; NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance; NUP, natively unstructured protein; CSI, chemical-shift index.Article published online ahead of pr...