Response to Comment on “Specific and nonhepatotoxic degradation of nuclear hepatitis B virus cccDNA”

Chisari et al . challenge our central conclusion that the hepatitis B virus (HBV) persistent form, the covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA), is degraded in a noncytotoxic and specific fashion in the nucleus of infected hepatocytes. Specificity of the assays used, exclusion of cell division or death, and activity of APOBEC3 deaminases in the nucleus, however, were addressed in the paper.