Relevance of PI3K/Akt, MAPKs, and NF-κB signaling pathways on the engulfment of parasites by BMDCs. A: BMDCs previously treated with specific inhibitors for Akt (wortmannin), p38 MAPK (SB203580), ERK1/2 (PD098059), SAPK/JNK (SP600125), or NF-κB (Bay 11-7082) were incubated with L. infantum parasites for 4 hours. B: BMDCs were submitted to electroporation without any plasmid DNA (negative control) or transfected with pmaxGFP, a dominant-negative mutant of Akt (HA-Akt DN), or with a constitutively activated form of Akt (HA-Akt CA). After 48 hours, BMDCs were infected with L. infantum parasites. Four hours after infection, cells were stained with 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole, and the numbers of infected cells as well as the numbers of parasites per cells were counted with a fluorescence microscope at ×1000. C: Images representative of fields of the different transfection experiments (original magnification: ×630) were acquired with a confocal laser scanning microscope (Zeiss LSM 510 Meta). Parasites were distributed in cytoplasm, and one of them is indicated by an arrow. Each value represents the mean ± SD from three independent experiments. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001.