Research Article

HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase Promotes Tumor Growth and Metastasis Formation via ROS-Dependent Upregulation of Twist

Figure 7

Formation of solid tumors by the derivative clones of 4T1luc2 expressing variants of HIV-1 FSU_A reverse transcriptase (RT_A) after ectopic implantation into BALB/c mice. In vivo bioluminescent images showing growth of representative tumors formed by clones 4T1luc2_RT-1.3 (I), 4T1luc2_RT-5.3 (II), 4T1luc2_RT-20.1 (III), 4T1luc2_RT-An-1.4 (IV), 4T1luc2_RT-An-10.1 (V), 4T1luc2_RT-Ann-1.5 (VI), 4T1luc2_RT-Ann-10.2 (VII), and parental cells 4T1luc2 (VIII); red circles show the regions of interest (ROI) from which the total luminescent signal was collected (a). Growth of tumors assessed as the average total photon flux from the sites of injection encircled by ROI (b), the average percent change in the total photon flux compared to the photon flux from the site obtained on day 1 (c), the total photon flux from each of the injections sites on days 6 (d) and 18 (e) as percent of that on day 1, and palpable tumor size at the experimental endpoint (f). All group values represent the . After day 3, 4T1luc2_RT-1.3 and 4T1luc2_RT-5.3 derivative clones demonstrated significantly higher total photon flux, and 4T1luc2_RT-20.1 tended to have higher photon flux () than the parental 4T1luc2 cells. , , , and , Kruskal-Wallis, followed by Mann-Whitney tests.
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