Figure 2.

Intracellular Toll-like receptors gene expression in SARS-CoV infected human immature DCs by quantitative RT-PCR. Toll-like receptor (TLR)-3, TLR-7, TLR-8 and TLR-9 primarily expressed intracellularly. Their mRNA concentrations in adult (a) and CB (b) immature DCs were assayed at 3 h and 9 h after infection with SARS-CoV (MOI = 1). Mock infected cells were included as negative control. The concentrations were normalised to those of β-actin mRNA in the corresponding sample. In SARS-CoV infected adult DCs, low but significant upregulation of TLR-7 was detected at 9 h after infection. The basal levels of intracellular TLR-8 gene expression in CB DCs was very high and no significant upregulation was detected after infection with SARS-CoV. Data are shown as mean ± SEM (adult n = 7; CB n = 5).