siRNA-mediated inhibition of HBV replication and expression

Figure 1 Design of siRNAs specific for HBV genome. A: Down-ward arrows show the target sites within the RNA transcripts. The HBV ORFs are shown below aligned with HBV mRNA. B: Schematic presentation of U6 promoter constructs. The in-verted 19 nt sequences are separated by a 9 nt loop, transcrip-tion ends with 5Ts. The resulting shRNA (short hairpin RNA) are predicted to fold back to form a hairpin RNA.

Figure 2 Effect of RNAi on HBV protein expression in tran-siently transfected Huh-7 cells.

Figure 3 Effect of RNAi on HBV gene transcription detected by Northern blot. A: Northern blot experiment of HBV transcripts. The 28 s and 18s rRNAs were visualized under ultraviolet light for equal loading control. B: The hybridiza-tion signal was quantitatively evaluated by Smartview^TM im-age analysis software (Shanghai Fu-ri Inc).

Figure 4 Effect of RNAi on IFN-induced genes. Real-time PCR quantification of MxA and 2’-5’ OAS. The copy number of MxA and 2’-5’OAS were normalized with GAPDH. The rela-tive fold induction of each gene compared with mock trans-fection is shown.