Figure 9.

HIV-1 mediated upregulation of mitophagy markers and proinflammatory cytokines in vivo. (a–f) Representative western blots showing the activation of mitophagy markers such as PINK1 (a), PRKN (b), and DNM1L (C) and autophagy markers such as BECN1 (d), MAP1LC3B-II (e), and SQSTM1 (f) in the frontal cortex of wild-type and HIV-1 Tg rats (n = 3). ACTB was probed as a protein loading control for all experiments. (g–i) Representative bar graphs showing the mRNA expression profile of proinflammatory cytokines such as Tnf (g), Il1b (h), and Il6 (I) using qPCR in the frontal cortex of wild-type and HIV-1 Tg rats (n = 3). Gapdh was used as an internal control to normalize the gene expression for all experiments. The data are presented as mean ± SEM from 3 independent experiments. An unpaired Student t test was used to determine the statistical significance. *, P < 0.05 vs. WT.