Figure 4.
Effect of almond extracts treatment on the HSV-1 replication and on viral antigens’ expression. (a) The viral DNA was extracted from Vero cells 24 h post-HSV-1 infection as described in the Materials and Methods. Relative quantization of viral DNA was performed using real-time quantitative PCR and analyzed by the comparative Ct method (ΔΔCt). Values represent ±SD of the average of three samples normalized against the GAPDH copies number; (b) Immunoblot analysis was performed in Vero cells HSV-1 infected and treated with natural (NS) and blanched (BS) skin extracts (0.4 mg/mL). Equal amounts of proteins were separated by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, transferred and probed with specific antibody to α (ICP0), β (ICP8) and γ (US11) viral proteins. GAPDH proteins were used for housekeeping. Band density was determined with the T.I.N.A. program and was expressed as the fold change over the appropriate housekeeping genes. Asterisks (***) indicate significant changes of p-values less than 0.001.