Figure 8.

Role for the autophagic adaptor protein p62 in the degradation of Core and NS5A. Huh7 cells expressing Core and NS5A were treated or not with 50 μmol/L menadione. Expression of Core (A), NS5A (B), p62 and GAPDH proteins were evaluated by Western blotting at 1 h intervals for 6 h as described in Materials and Methods. For p62 silencing, Huh7 cell expressing HCV Core (C) and NS5A (D) were transfected twice with esiRNAs. Cells were plated and reverse transfected with esiRNA p62 and random esiRNAs as described in Materials and Methods. Transfected cells were treated with menadione (50 μmol/L) and the expression Core, NS5A and p62 protein were detected by Western blot. The experiments were repeated three times. The relative HCV Core and NS5A expression was determined by densitometry and a t-test was performed to compare the means and the asterisks represent the p value as follows ** ˂0.001 and * ˂0.04. n.s = non-significant, (p values > 0.05 are considered not statistically significant).