Figure 4

Increase pro-apoptotic gene expression in the brains of individual ME7 infected and mock infected C57BL/6 mice. cDNA from whole brains of 9 ME7 infected and 8 mock infected C57BL/6 mice were analyzed in a blinded fashion. Each data point represents the mean of three independent quantitative real-time PCR reactions for each gene normalized to the average level of expression exhibited by the mock infected samples. Filled diamonds represent those samples obtained from brains of ME7 infected C57BL/6 mice. The shaded circles represent cDNA samples obtained from age-matched mock infected C57BL/6 mice. The lines represent the mean value of the 17 samples for each gene. A clear segregation of the infected and mock-infected samples based upon the relative expression of TNFα, TNFR1, Fas/ApoI and caspase 8 was observed in brain tissue. In contrast, FasL was not significantly differentially expressed between infected and mock infected samples (TNFα p = 3.74E^-32, TNFR1 p = 1.03E^-25, FasL p = 0.071, Fas/ApoI p = 6.62E^-27, and caspase 8 p = 1.37E^-15).