Fig. 5

IL-2 is implicated in PCV2 disease. a Kinetics of IL-2 responsive gene expression (Hallmark IL2-STAT5 SIGNALING) upon three microbial infections: PCV2 (blue), S. Typhimurium (orange) and S. Choleraesuis (green). b IL-2 activation of freshly isolated and ConA-stimulated lymphocytes maintains exponential cellular proliferation, yielding primary porcine lymphoblast (PPL) cell strains. Means ± sd represent one experiment in triplicate (n = 3). c Representative image of proliferating PLLs. Scale bar: 50 μm. d PCV2 Cap immunostaining in PLLs 36 hpi. Scale bar: 100 μm. e-g IL-2 supplementation doubles PCV2 infection after a single round of replication (36 hpi) and increases viral load in cell supernatant. Dot blot shows six single independent experiments, box plots show the median, the 25th and 75th percentiles with whiskers representing median ± 1.5 times interquartile range (n = 6; *P < 0.05, two-tailed Wilcoxon signed-rank test). PPL cell strains were generated from six different individuals