Figure 2.

Eukaryotic expression of the full-length and truncated variants of HCV core protein. HCV core coding plasmids were used to transfect Huh-7 (a) or BHK-21 cells (b). In brief, 48 h post transfection, the cells were lysed, resolved by SDS-PAGE and subjected to Western blotting with anti-core rabbit antibodies [60] (a,b, upper panels). After core-specific staining, the blots were stripped and re-stained with antibodies to tubulin or β-actin (a,b, lower panels). (c) The signals generated in each experiment were quantified using ImageJ, core-specific signals were normalized to that of actin for Huh7, or tubulin for BHK-21 cells, and presented as fold-difference to the level of expression of core151v (altogether four separate experiments). Core173v and 191v were better expressed in Huh7 cells (* p < 0.05); levels of expression of core152s in these two cell lines did not differ.