Figure 5.

Overexpression of duNLRP3 increases inflammatory cytokine production and reduces bacterial content in DEFs. DEFs were seeded in 6-well plates and infected with 20 μL of 10⁸ TU/mL NLRP3-lentiviral vector (MOI = 10) for 48 h. The cells were then infected or uninfected (UI) with 1 × 10⁴ CFU/mL E.coli for 3 h and harvested at 4 hpi for (A) duNLRP3 mRNA expression level, the E.coli-infected or UI DEFs were used as controls respectively, (B) duNLRP3 protein expression level, (C) inflammatory cytokine mRNA expression level, the corresponding NC-lentiviral vector infected DEFs as the control, and (D) intracellular bacterial CFU detection. The data in (A) and (C) were analyzed by the 2^−ΔΔCt method. All data were expressed as the means ± SD (n = 3), and the student's t test was performed to evaluate the differences. **Highly significant difference (P < 0.01).