Fig. 8.

Pulmonary antimicrobial peptide production and fungal burden in WT and IL-22^−/− mice following inoculation with C. neoformans strain H99γ. IL-22^−/− mice and WT 129 mice were intranasally inoculated with 1×10⁴ c.f.u. of C. neoformans strain H99γ yeast cells. For pulmonary antimicrobial peptide analysis, lung homogenates were prepared from lungs excised on day 5 post-inoculation and assayed for S100A8 (a), S100A9 (b), lipocalin-2 (c) and SAA3 (d) production by ELISA. For pulmonary fungal burden analysis (e), mice were killed at day 14 post-inoculation and pulmonary homogenates were plated for quantitative culture on YPD agar. Data are cumulative of three experiments utilizing four to five mice per group (for antimicrobial peptides) or two experiments utilizing four mice per group (for fungal burden analysis) per time point for each experiment. Asterisks indicate significant differences (*P<0.05).