Figure 4

Iota-Carrageenan does not induce HRV2 escape mutants after 10 passages. A. HeLa cells in 6-well plates (8 * 10⁴ cells per well) were infected with HRV2 in the presence of Iota-Carrageenan. After infection the cells were washed and medium containing polymer was added at concentrations between 2 μg/ml and 100 μg/ml. Plates were incubated at 37°C until cells in the control (no polymer added) showed >90% damage. Living cells were fixed and stained with crystal violet staining solution. B. Supernatants from infected wells with Carrageenan of 20 μg/ml were used for the next infection round. For the following infection rounds the supernatants of wells with 7 μg/ml or 20 μg/ml were used for the subsequent infection round. After ten repetitive infection experiments the sensitivity of the resulting virus (white bars) to different concentrations of Iota-Carrageenan (x-axis) was compared with that of the original virus (black bars). Cell proliferation was determined with an XTT-assay. Survival of mock infected cells was set to 100%, and that in the absence of polymer was set to 0% (y-axis). The bars represent means of six independent experiments standard deviation is indicated.