Fig 7. Expression of gK, UL20, ICP0, and gB transcripts in cornea and TG of ocularly infected mice in the presence of dTat-gK4.

BALB/c mice were ocularly infected with 1 X10⁵ PFU/eye of HSV-1 strain McKrae and treated with dTat-gK4 or dTat control peptide as described in Materials and Methods. Levels of gK, UL20, ICP0, and gB transcripts in the cornea and TG were determined on day 4 PI by qRT-PCR. Estimated relative copy number of HSV-1 UL20, gK, ICP0 and gB was calculated using standard curves generated from pUL20 [14], pAC-gB1 [65], pAc-gK1 [6], and pcDNA3.1-ICP0 [61]. Briefly, a DNA template, serially diluted 10-fold such that 1 μl contained from 10³ to 10¹¹ copies of each plasmid, was amplified by TaqMan PCR with the same primer set. Copy number of each reaction was determined by comparing the C_T of each sample to the threshold cycle of the standard. GAPDH expression was used to normalize relative expression of each transcript in the cornea and TG of infected mice. Each bar represents mean ± SEM from five mouse corneas or TG. Panels: (A) gK expression in cornea; (B) gB expression in cornea; (C) ICP0 expression in cornea; (D) UL20 expression in cornea; (E) gK expression in TG; (F) gB expression in TG; and (G) ICP0 expression in TG.