Figure 1.
Inhibition of HSV-1 infection by MxA. (a) Schematic of MxA induced by IFN-α treatment. The 76-kDa MxA protein is expressed from Exons 5–17 and is organized in an N-terminal GTPase domain (residues 1–371) and a C-terminal region that can be divided into a central interactive domain (CID) (residues 372–540) and a leucine zipper domain (LZ) (residues 564–662). Folding back of the LZ region on the CID assembles the monomeric MxA into large oligomeric complexes and increases GTPase activity.1 (b) Effect of MxA on HSV-1 infection. Human fibroblasts that expressed full-length MxA were infected with HSV-1 and virus yields were evaluated by plaque assay at 24 h after infection. Constitutive expression of MxA reduced HSV-1 yields as shown; each bar represents the mean±s.e. of duplicate or triplicate titrations from two independent wells (two-tailed Student’s t-test, P<0.01).