Fig. 2

The effects of IFI44L on drug resistance and sphere formation. a Dose-dependent growth inhibition of Hep3B and HepG2 cells upon continuous exposure to the indicated concentrations of doxorubicin for 48 h was measured by MTT assay (*, P < 0.05; **, P < 0.01). Cells were transfected with 1 μg of pMSCV or pMSCV-IFI44L expression plasmids (IFI44L vector). b The expression levels of IFI44L in parental Hep3B and HepG2 cells and their sphere cells were measured by Western blotting. The actin was used as an internal control. Relative band intensity was quantified by ImageJ 1.42 (Windows version of NIH Image, http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/) and was represented with normalized mean ± s.e. (n = 3) below each band. c Western blotting analysis of three different siRNAs against IFI44L in Hep3B cells. The actin was used as an internal control. Relative band intensity was quantified by ImageJ 1.42 and was represented with normalized mean ± s.e. (n = 3) below each band. d Sphere formation under stem cell selective condition was examined on day 8 after culturing of the cells transfected with the indicated IFI44L-siRNA. The original magnification was 40X. Histograms represent means ± s.d. from three independent experiments (*, P < 0.05, **, P < 0.01)