Figure 6.

(A) Dose–effect curves for virucidal activity of PNA_TAR–peptides. The VSV-G pseudotyped HIV-1 virions were first incubated with indicated concentrations of individual PNA_TAR–peptide conjugates as described in the Materials and Methods. The treated virions were used to infect CEM cells (0.5 × 10⁶ cells). The infected cells were grown for 48 h, harvested, lysed and assayed for luciferase activity. The level of luciferase expression as a function of virucidal effect of individual PNA_TAR–peptide concentration on HIV-1 virions in CEM cells infected with treated and untreated virions, was analyzed using the Calcusyn software (Biosoft). (B) Median-effect Plots for virucidal activity: The IC₅₀ for virucidal effect of individual PNA_TAR–peptide conjugates was determined from the ratio of the log of luciferase expression in CEM cells infected with treated (fa) and untreated HIV-1 virions (fu) as a function of the log concentration of PNA_TAR–peptide (Table 1).