Figure 4.

Specific suppression achieved after transfection of prom-A siRNA. (A) The promoter regions of HIV-1, HIV-2, and ICAM-1 are aligned. Sequence corresponding to HIV-prom-A siRNA highlighted in blue. Non-homologous bases in HIV-2 and ICAM-1 are indicated in red. Underlining indicates the NF-κB binding sites. (B) HIV-prom-A siRNA does not inhibit HIV-2 infection. Histogram shows RT levels 8 days after transfection with siRNAs, 8hours after infection of MAGIC-5 cells with laboratory stain HIV-2 CBL-20. No marked difference was observed among cultures transfected with HIV-prom-A, scrambled siRNA or mock transfection. NC indicates non-infected MAGIC-5 cells. (C) ICAM-1 gene expression is not affected by HIV-prom-A siRNA transfection. MAGIC-5 cells were infected with HIV-1 molecular clone NL4-3 for 5 hours followed by transfection with siRNAs. Expression levels of HIV-1 gag and ICAM-1 mRNA at day 3 post infection are shown in the histograms normalized to 10³ copies of β-actin mRNA. Mean and standard deviations were obtained from three different experiments. Mock: transfection with lipofectamine only, NC: non-infected Magic-5 cells.