FIG. 3.

Cholesterol depletion postinfection does not affect WNV growth. (A) Vero cells were infected at an MOI of 5 PFU of WNV/cell. Six hours postinfection, cells were treated with MBCD as described above, and cell growth continued until the indicated time points. Viral titers were determined by plaque assays as described in Materials and Methods. Results representative of two independent experiments performed in triplicate are shown. Error bars represent SD (n = 3). (B) SK-N-MC cells were infected at an MOI of 10 PFU of WNV/cell, and at the indicated time points, cells were harvested for RNA isolation. Copy numbers of HMGCR mRNA were estimated by TaqMan gene expression analysis primer-probe sets as described in Materials and Methods. β-actin cycle threshold values were used for normalization. Error bars represent SD (n = 6).