Fig. 2. Impact of prophylactic vaccination on HSV-1 latency.

Latent virus was assessed in trigeminal ganglia from vaccinated and naive mice following ocular infection with 1×10⁴ PFU HSV-1 McKrae per eye. (A) Quantitative PCR reads of HSV-1 genome copy numbers in the TG of surviving WT and Ifnar1^−/− mice at day 30 p.i. (n = 6–7 mice per group; 2–3 independent experiments). (B) Relative expression of HSV-1 latency associated transcript (LAT) in the TG of surviving WT mice at day 30 p.i. (n = 4–6 mice/group; 2 independent experiments). Reported LAT expression is relative to phosphyoglycerate kinase 1 expression and normalized to uninfected controls. (C) Naive and vaccinated reporter mice expressing Cre-inducible tdTomato reporter construct on the Rosa26 locus were ocularly challenged with 1×10³ PFU of transgenic HSV-1 expressing Cre-recombinase (SC16 strain) per eye. In this model, cells productively infected by HSV-1 express the tdTomato reporter. Confocal images of sectioned TGs from vaccinated and naive reporter mice at day 30 p.i. showing productively infected neurons exclusively in naive animals (images are representative of TG from 3 mice/group; 2 independent experiments; scale bar = 200 μm). Data in panels A and B were analyzed by one-way ANOVA with Newman-Keuls multiple comparisons tests.