Figure 2

Hypoxia increases transactivation by EBNA1 and reduces transactivation by Tat. (A) Transfected C33a cells were split 6 hours post-transfection into aliquots incubated under normoxia (N) or hypoxia (H). Luciferase activity was assayed at 24 hours post-transfection. Transactivation is expressed as a percent of transactivation observed under normoxic (control) conditions. Hypoxia increased transactivation by EBNA1 increased to 125% of normoxic conditions, but decreased transactivation by Tat to 25% of normoxic conditions. (B) Immunoblots indicate that hypoxia did not alter expression of Tat or EBNA1. β-actin was used as a loading control. Asterisks indicate statistical significance by the Wilcoxon rank-sum test (p < 0.05) when comparing results obtained under hypoxia against normoxia.