Fig 5.

IRF-3 mediates IFN-β transcriptional induction and enhances neuronal survival in BE(2)-C/m cells in response to SLEV but not LACV infection. (A) BE(2)-C/m cells stably transfected with empty vector (lanes 1 to 9) or a constitutively active dnIRF-3 expression plasmid (lanes 10 to 18) were mock infected (lanes 1 to 3 and 10 to 12) or infected with LACV (lanes 4 to 6 and 13 to 15) or SLEV at an MOI of 1 (lanes 7–9 and 16–18), and IFN-β and rRNA transcript levels were assayed by semiquantitative RT-PCR at 20 hpi. Adjacent lanes for individual samples represent results using 10-fold dilutions of cDNA. (B and C) BE(2)-C/m cells stably transfected with empty control vector (closed symbols) or a dnIRF-3 construct (open symbols) were infected with SLEV (B) or LACV (C) at the indicated MOI, and viability relative to mock-infected controls was measured from 12 to 72 hpi. *, P < 0.05; **, P < 0.005 (compared to virus-infected cells expressing control vector at the corresponding time point).