Infection of hepatoma cell lines with cell culture adapted HCV.

(A) HuH-7, HepG2-CD81, Hep3B, PLC/PRF/5, SNU-182, SNU-398, SNU-449, Cos-7 and Caco-2 cells transduced with lentivirus expressing RFP-NLS-IPS were mock-infected (left) or inoculated with i24 (middle) (MOI = 10000 HuH-7 infectious units per cell). Infected cells, identified by translocation of the cleavage product RFP-NLS to the nucleus, were visualized 48 h post-infection. The supernatants of inoculated cells were recovered 72 h post-infection, centrifuged and used to inoculate naive HuH-7-RFP-NLS-IPS to check the production of progeny virus (right). Images are representative of three independent experiments. (B) The permissivity of HuH-7, HepG2-CD81, Hep3B and PLC/PRF/5 cells to the cell culture adapted virus was determined by TCID₅₀ assay. The results are expressed as TCID₅₀/mL ± S.D. calculated on 8 wells. (C) miR-122 expression was determined by RT-qPCR in HuH-7, HepG2-CD81, Hep3B, PLC/PRF/5, SNU-182, SNU-389, SNU-449, Cos-7 and Caco-2 cells. The results, which are representative of four independent experiments, are expressed as relative miR-122 expression using the ΔΔCt method with RNU6B as endogenous control and HuH-7 cells as calibrator.