FIG. 6.

Effect of conditions present during ALI cell incubation on viral decay. Viral particles of the 2009 H1N1 strain were incubated in empty wells at 37°C for the indicated times with mucus removed from ALI cultures. Means ± SD of viable virus remaining after incubation were determined using a microplaque plaque assay (solid line). An exponential decay curve was fit to the resulting data (dashed line), with a decay constant of 1.76 × 10⁻¹⁶ h⁻¹; half-life, 3.95 × 10¹⁵ h.