Fig. 5

Effects of baicalein on viral protein expression at the entry and adsorption stage of ZIKV infection as assessed by western blotting. A549 cells were pre-treated with 100 µM baicalein at 1, 3, 6 h (-1, -3, -6) prior to infection, or cells were co-treated with baicalein during infection. Cells were infected with ZIKV at MOI of 1 prior to incubating cells for a further 24 h. Total proteins were extracted from cells and viral protein expression was examined by western blotting. A Viral structural (E) protein, viral non-structural (NS1) protein, and control GAPDH proteins were analyzed. B, C Intensity of the protein bands was quantitated and normalized against control GAPDH by ImageJ version 1.52a. Expression levels are shown as fold-change over the untreated sample. All experiments were undertaken independently in triplicate. Error bars show mean ± SD and p-value compared to the appropriate DMSO control of each time-point (** p-value < 0.01, *** p-value < 0.001). UT = untreated. Full uncropped blots of all replicates are available in the associated Supplementary materials