Figure 1. Prolonged survival of MRL/lpr mice with high expression of WSX-1. A. The cumulative survivals of wild type (WT), transgenic low (TgL) and high (TgH) mice were monitored weekly (n = 20 per group). *p<0.05 by the Kaplan–Meier method. There was no difference in the survival rate between WT and TgL mice. B. Western blot analysis of the transgenic expression of WSX-1 in CD4⁺ T cells from WT mice and two Tg-positive MRL/lpr mouse lines, TgL and TgH. The lysates of purified splenic CD4⁺ T cells from 16-week-old WT, TgL and TgH mice were separated by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) under reducing condition and transferred to membranes. Expression levels for β-actin protein was visualised for each sample as a loading control. The transgene products demonstrate robust, moderate and faint expression of WSX-1 in TgH, TgL and WT mice T cells, respectively.