Figure 1.

PI markedly inhibits RV-A16 replication but does not prevent viral internalization in AECs. (A) The data are from cells obtained from 4 different donors and are shown as mean ± SD from 3 independent experiments with duplicated wells in each experiment. * indicates, p < 0.05 in comparisons between RV16 alone and RV16 + PI. (B) The data are from cells obtained from 3 different donors and are shown as mean ± SD. The differentiated AECs were pre-treated (or not) for 16 h with PI (4 mg/mL) and infected apically with RV-A16 at 2.5 × 10⁵ pfu/well at 4 °C or 35 °C for 2 h. The cells were collected with or without trypsin/EDTA treatment before total RNA extraction to determine the viral RNA copy number using qRT-PCR. (C) Immunofluorescent staining of mock or RV-A16 infected AECs (48 h p.i.) that were treated (or not) with PI. Cells were stained with anti-ICAM1 antibodies (red) to confirm viral receptor expression, and anti-VP2 (green) and anti-dsRNA (white) antibodies to visualize virus-infected cells. The scale bar represents 50 μm.