Fig. 3.

LPS treatment of cBMDCe but not cBMMs leads to viral gene expression and increase in viral DNA copy number. BMCs isolated from BALB/c mice 3 months p.i. with Smith virus were cultured in BMC maintenance medium (cBMCs), M-CSF containing medium (cBMMs) or GM-CSF/IL-4 containing medium (cBMDCe) for 9 days, and subject to 100 ng ml⁻¹ LPS treatment. (a) Viral RNA expression in different time points post LPS treatment. RT-qPCR on the RNA from cBMCs, cBMMs or cBMDCe collected at different time points upon LPS treatment. Data are presented at relative level (arbitrary number) after normalization against cellular Eef2 RNA. (b) Absolute quantification of MCMV DNA copy number. DNA was extracted from cBMCs/LPS, cBMMs/LPS or cBMDCe/LPS at different time points after adding LPS, and subject to qPCR with the Taqman primers and probe specific to the MIEP region of the viral genome. Data values are presented as copy number per million cells after normalization against cellular gene mEFα. Data values are expressed as means±sd. N=6 for all time points. Statistics were performed using multiple individual Student's t-test. *P-value≤0.05; **P-value≤0.01.