Fig. 5

Effect of overexpression of IκB isoforms on the transcriptional activity of the human iNOS promoter in PVEC. Cells were cotransfected with the phiNOS-205Luc plasmid, defined in Figure 1, and expression plasmids for the IκBα, IκBβ, or IκBε isoform. Control cultures (first set of bars) received equal amounts of expression plasmids but without the cDNA of anyone of the IκB isoforms. Open bars represent the expression of luciferase reporter gene in untreated cells; closed bars represent effect of IL-1β treatment. Luciferase activity is expressed relative to that achieved in untreated PVEC cotransfected with the phiNOS-205Luc plasmid and an empty expression vector. Luciferase activity was normalized to protein concentration of cell extracts. Values shown are the means ± SEM of four independent experiments.