Regan Leblanc

1. Introduction Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a member of the Hepadnaviral family and is the smallest DNA virus known to infect animals. The HBV genome is 3.2 kilobases (kB) [1,2,3,4,5], consisting of partially double-stranded, relaxed circular DNA (rcDNA) that is covalently attached to a multifunctional viral polymerase protein (P) (Figure 1A) [1,6,7].