Figure 8.

Effects of Nef expression on glutamate uptake into astrocytes. U373 (A & C) or human primary fetal astrocytes (B & D) were transfected with pC3 or Nef (A & B), or infected with VSVG/GAGi and GAGi.Nef- (C & D). The cells were cultured for 24 hr, changed media, pulsed with [³H]-glutamate, and harvested for cell lysates. The cell lysates were subjected to scintillation counting and normalized with protein concentration. GFP was included in the transfection to ensure the comparable transfection efficiency (A & B), or GFP expression from the infected cells was used to ensure the comparable infection efficiency (C & D). The data were Mean ± SEM and representative of three independent experiments (n=3).