RPS17 and hepatocellular carcinoma: Recently, the adaptation of a unique genotype 3 HEV (Kernow C-1) recovered from a chronically infected patient to propagate in HepG2C3A human hepatoma cells has selected for a rare virus recombinant that contains an insertion of a 171-nucleotide sequence of human ribosomal protein S17 (RPS17) within the hypervariable region of HEV ORF1.