Fig 6.

Expression of miR-122 is essential for the enhancement of HCV replication in the Hec1B cells. (A) Huh7.5.1 and Hec1B cells were transduced with lentiviral vectors expressing miR-122 in a dose-dependent manner and infected with HCVcc at an MOI of 1. Intracellular miR-122 and HCV RNA were determined at 24 h postinfection by qRT-PCR. (B) Huh7.5.1 and Hec1B/miR-122 cells were infected with HCVcc at an MOI of 0.5 or 3 and subjected to immunoblotting and immunofluorescence analyses using anti-NS5A antibodies at 48 h postinfection. The asterisk indicates nonspecific bands. (C) LNAs specific to miR-122 at a final concentration of 5 nM, 20 nM, or 50 nM and control (LNA alone at 50 nM) were introduced into Huh7/Cont, Huh7/miR-122, Hec1B/miR-122, and Hec1B/Cont cells by using Lipofectamine RNAiMAX transfection reagent and infected with HCVcc at an MOI of 1 at 6 h posttransfection. Intracellular HCV RNA levels were determined by qRT-PCR at 12, 24, and 36 h postinfection. Asterisks indicate significant differences (*, P < 0.05; **, P < 0.01) versus the results for control cells.