Fig. 1

Purification of mature HPV16 PsVs by SEC. a SDS-PAGE and Western blots for human histone H3 of SEC fractions of a 293TT cell lysate (control experiment). b SDS-PAGE and Western blots for detecting L1, L2 and human histone H3 of SEC fractions of a lysates of 293TT cells transfected with p16sheLL and pYSEAP. c SDS-PAGE and Western blots for detecting L1 protein and human histone H3. Control refers to a mixture of fractions 3 – 8 in panel a; PsV refers to a mixture of fractions 3 – 8 in panel b. M is a protein marker. PsVs eluted early (in fractions 3 to 8, red box in panel b), whereas most cellular proteins eluted later (fractions 10 to 16), indicating that the PsVs were larger than most of the latter (b). Histone H3 co-eluted with L1 protein in fractions 4 to 6 (b) and there was no histone H3 in the corresponding fractions of the 293TT cell control (a). Fractions 3–8 from the 293TT cell control were combined, as were fractions 3–8 from the 293TT cells producing HPV16 PsVs (red boxes in a and b); they were then analyzed by SDS-PAGE and Western blotting (c)