Fig. 3

PTE inhibited HCMV at a stage post virus entry. A, B Schematic representation of the Time-of-addition experimental design. A For Entry treatment, PTE or FOS was added to WI-38 cells for 2 h before HCMV inoculation, and at 1 hpi, the virus-drug mixture was discarded, and fresh culture medium was added. B For Post-Entry treatment, after 1 h of HCMV inoculation and viral attachment, the culture medium containing virus was replaced with fresh culture medium with PTE or FOS. For all the experimental groups, WI-38 cells were infected with HCMV at an MOI of 5 and collected at 3 dpi, and the concentrations of PTE and FOS used here were 10 μM and 200 μg/mL, respectively. HCMV proteins and DNA copy number in these groups were detected and quantified using Western blotting analysis (C, D) and qPCR (E). GAPDH was used as the loading control. Representative images were acquired from three independent experiments, and data obtained from three independent experiments were used for quantitative analysis. The HCMV infection alone group was used as the control. ^#P < 0.05, ^##P < 0.01, ^###P < 0.001