Fig. 8. The five caspase 3 activating proteins are important for maximal cell death induction in dendritic cells.

A. Dendritic cells prepared from bone marrows of A/J mice used infected with indicated bacterial strains and the total bacterial counts were determined at indicated time points. Note the drastic drop in the number of survived wild type bacteria over the 48-hr infection duration. B. DCs similarly infected as panel A were subjected to immunostaining to label the cells, the bacteria and the apoptotic status of the infected cells with specific antibodies. Infected cells stained positively by the TUNEL reagent were enumerated under an Olympus IX-81 fluorescence microscope. At least 200 infected cells were scored from each sample done in triplicate. C. Representative images of the cells were acquired from these samples. Similar results were obtained in three experiments done with independently isolated DCs.