Figure 5

Functional characterization of the ES,S VLPs. (A) Competitive ELISA analysis. Anti-EDIII mAb was pre-incubated either with S (blue curve) or ES,S₄ (red curve) antigen VLPs, followed by titration of residual mAb reactivity on yeast-expressed EDIII-2 antigen-coated ELISA plates. (B) Binding blocking analysis. Vero cells were pre-incubated with S (curve ‘c’), ES,S₀ (curve ‘a’), ES,S₂ (curve ‘d’) and ES,S₄ (curve ‘e’) VLPs and then infected with DENV-2. Control DENV-2 infection in the absence of any VLP pre-incubation (curve ‘b’) and mock-infections (dashed curve) were carried out in parallel. The progress of infection was monitored over a week by measuring the release of NS1 antigen in the culture supernatant. Experiments in both panels A and B were repeated twice; results of one representative experiment each are shown.