Fig. 7: The effects of the inhibition of PIASy-induced autophagy on HCV replication in Huh7 cells.

In the presence or absence of an inhibitor in the early stage of autophagy, 3-methyladenine (3-MA,10 mM), HCV JFH-1-infected Huh7 cells were transfected with pCMV-myc-PIASy/empty vector (a) or shRNA-PIASy/control-scrambled shRNA (b) for 96 h. a A representative western blot image shows the protein levels of PIASy, HCV core, LC3B-I, LC3B-II, and p62 in PIASy-overexpressed or control cells. The relative ratios of PIASy/β-actin, HCV core/β-actin, LC3B-II/β-actin, LC3B-II/LC3B-I, and p62/β-actin were calculated and shown as the fold of control (without 3-MA treatment and with empty vector transfection, which was defined as 1). b A representative western blot image shows the protein levels of PIASy, HCV core, LC3B-I, LC3B-II, and p62 in PIASy-down-expressed or control cells. The relative ratios of PIASy/β-actin, HCV core/β-actin, LC3B-II/β-actin, LC3B-II/LC3B-I, and p62/β-actin were calculated and shown as the fold of control (without 3-MA treatment and with scrambled shRNA transfection, which was defined as 1). The data are the mean ± SD of the results of three independent experiments. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01