Fig 5. DENV2 3’UTR enhances DENV2 gRNA viral levels while inhibiting innate immunity.

Huh-7 cells were either regularly infected (non-treated), or 2 hours prior to infection transfected with sense DENV2 3’UTR, antisense DENV2 3’UTR or lipofectamine alone. 17 hours post infection total cellular RNA was extracted and (A) Absolute copy number of intracellular DENV2 gRNA was measured by qRT-PCR. **, p-value ≤ 0.005, ****, p-value ≤ 0.0001 as determined by a Fisher’s LSD test. (B) Relative mRNA transcript levels of IFN-β and IFN-λ₁ measured at 17 hours post infection, normalized first to GAPDH mRNA levels, and then to regular infection (“none” treatment post infection). *, p-value ≤ 0.05, as determined by unpaired t-test with Welch’s correction. (C) Relative mRNA transcript levels of interferon stimulated genes, ISG15 and MX-1 measured at 17 hours post-infection, normalized first to GAPDH mRNA levels, and then to regular infection (“none” treatment post infection). *, p-value≤0.05, **, p-value ≤ 0.005. For ISG15, p-value was determined by a Dunn’s test. For MX-1 mRNA levels, p-value was determined by an unpaired t-test with Welch’s correction. Points demonstrate replicate values from one independent experiment. Bars demonstrate arithmetic means ± s.e.m.