Figure 2

Inhibition of intracellular plus and minus-RNA strands by antisense primers. HepG2 cells were cultured in absence (lanes 1,2) and presence of S-ODN1 (Fig 2a) or S-ODN2 (Fig 2b) at either 1 μM (lanes 3,4) or 2 μM (lanes 5,6). Cellular RNA was reverse transcribed using plus strand (lanes 1,3,5) or minus-strand (lanes 2,4,6) specific primers. cDNAs were amplified by nested PCR as in materials and methods. RNA from infected and uninfected sera were similarly amplified to serve as positive (lane7) and negative (lane 8) controls. Band density in each lane was scanned and measured using Total-Lab software. Relative viral copies/cell are represented in figure 2c.