FIGURE 3.
Luciferase assay performed in human cells containing an integrated HIVSF2-LTR promoter driven reporter gene and co-transfected with siRNA targeting the HIVSF2-LTR promoter and Tat expression plasmid, pSV40.Tat-86. (A) Schematic representation of the luciferase reporter plasmids engineered to contain either wild-type (pGL4.20.SF2-LTR-Luc) or mutated (pGL4.20.SF2mut-LTR-Luc) promoter target sequences within the HIVSF2-LTR promoter. Mismatched bases are underlined. (B) Luciferase (firefly) gene activity from HeLa cells containing an integrated reporter gene when treated with siSF2-247 or its variants. Tat-induced firefly luciferase activity is normalized to that from cells not transfected with siRNA (“Mock”) and is presented as the percentage mean ± SD from three independent experiments, with three replicate samples per experiment; (*) p < 0.05.