Figure 4

Beta-mercaptoethanol reduces transactivation by Tat, but has no effect on transactivation by EBNA1. (A) Transfected C33a cells were split 6 hours post-transfection into aliquots and exposed to the indicated concentrations of beta-mercaptoethanol (β-ME) for an additional 18 hours, prior to reporter analysis. The inset legend indicates the columns corresponding to each effector/reporter combination. Control cells were vehicle treated. Transactivation is expressed as a percent of transactivation in the absence of beta-mercaptoethanol (control conditions). (B) Immunoblots indicate that beta-mercaptoethanol did not affect expression of EBNA1 or Tat. β-actin was used as a loading control. Asterisks indicate statistical significance by the Wilcoxon rank-sum test (p < 0.05) for treated samples compared to vehicle-treated controls.