Figure 2.

Extracellular Tat increases the ability of FGF-2 to induce Rho-A/pERK signaling in primary cultured podocytes isolated from the urine of children with HIVAN. Primary podocytes were starved overnight in serum-free media and treated with Tat (100 ng/ml) alone or combined with FGF-2 (50 ng/ml). The Rho-A inhibitor C3-transferase (20 ng/ml) was added 4 hours before stimulation. The cells were treated for 5 minutes as described above and then harvested to assess the phosphorylation of Rho-A, pERK, and pMLC as described in Concise Methods. The graph shows mean±SEM corresponding to three different experiments. Results were expressed in OD units expressed as a ratio of the total activity. Values significantly different from the corresponding control group are marked: *P<0.05; **P<0.01.