Figure 3. Transcriptional activity of DC-SIGNR promoters.

(a, b) Effect of the p-198A variant on transcriptional activity in luciferase reporter assay in vitro in transfected HeLa cells. (a) Schematic representation of reporter gene constructs corresponding to the DC-SIGNR promoter region from –715 to –1, spanning with either C (WT) or A at position −198. (b) Relative luciferase expression from pGL2-Basic, the parental vector without the promoter. Expression of the DC-SIGNR promoter constructs were calculated relatively to this value. Data are presented in mean±S.E.M. values of three independent experiments performed in triplicate and difference in relative luciferase expression between the p-198 variants was examined with the Student's t test. (c) Total number of DC-SIGNR isoforms in homozygous H1 (p-198AA, int2-180AA) and homozygous WT (p-198CC, int2-180GG) placental samples measured by qRT-PCR assays in three independent experiments performed in triplicate. Data are shown in mean±S.E.M. copies number normalized by 10⁵ copies number of GAPDH. Student's t test was used to calculate differences in the number of isoforms between the H1 and WT groups.