Fig. 7.

Antimicrobial peptide gene expression in WT and IL-22^−/− mice following inoculation with H99γ. BALB/c mice were intranasally inoculated with 1×10⁴ c.f.u. of C. neoformans strain H99γ in 50 µl sterile PBS. At day 5 post-inoculation, mice were killed and pulmonary RNA was isolated from whole lung tissues homogenized in TRIzol reagent. cDNA was prepared from total RNA and real-time PCR was performed to measure S100A8, S100A9, lipocalin-2 (LCN-2) and SAA3 expression. Bars represent the fold change in gene expression in pulmonary tissues from IL-22^−/− mice compared with tissues from WT mice. Data shown are cumulative of three independent experiments utilizing individual tissues from four mice per group per time point per experiment and are reported as means±sem (*P<0.05).