Fig. 5.

METH exposure and EcoHIV infection affect the expression of the CXCL12-CXCR4-FOXO3 axis. a Differentially expressed mRNAs of representative FOXO-targeted genes by METH exposure and/or EcoHIV infection in NPCs from Fig. 4. The upper plots are representative genes regulated by the FOXO family of transcription factors and the lower plots are representative FOXO3-regulated genes. b Representative immunoblots of CXCL12, phosphorylated CXCR4 (pCXCR4), and FOXO3. GAPDH was used as a loading control. c Quantitative results from (b). The intensity of the bands corresponding to CXCL12, pCXCR4, and FOXO was normalized to the corresponding GAPDH intensity, and the mean and SEM were calculated. Two-way ANOVA was used for statistical analysis. N=4–6 per group. *, p<0.05 and **, p<0.01. d Representative images of FOXO3- and Sox2-positive cells in the SVZ. Mice were exposed to METH and/or infected with EcoHIV as in Fig. 2b. Frozen brain sections were immunostained for FOXO3 (green foci) and Sox2 (red) and examined under the confocal microscope. Scale bar = 20 μm; z-stacked images