Whole livers were obtained from the vaccine-protected mice in the challenge study promptly after the animals were sacrificed. Each liver was placed in a 5-ml plastic tube containing 4.0 ml of
ALT buffer (Qiagen, Valencia, CA, USA), and then homogenized at 2,500 rpm for 3.5 min using a μT-12 bead crusher (Tatitec, Saitama, Japan). Total DNA was isolated from 100-µl aliquots of the resulting homogenates using a
DNA isolation kit (Qiagen) in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions. A quantitative analysis of the DNA was performed by qPCR with
SYBR Green Premix Ex Taq (Takara, Tokyo, Japan). The oligonucleotide primers used for qPCR are shown in
Supplemental Table 1. pAAV-CMV-sPfCSP2-G(+) plasmid DNA was used to generate a standard curve for the qPCR assays targeting the
pfcsp gene sequences. A
Ct cutoff was determined for each assay, whereby any well with a
Ct value ≥ the mean
Cq of the 10
3 standard was omitted from the analysis because it would lie outside of the linear range of the assay. The fit-points method for absolute quantification was used for the analysis, and the noise band and threshold were set to Auto (18 (
link)).
Shahnaij M., Iyori M., Mizukami H., Kajino M., Yamagoshi I., Syafira I., Yusuf Y., Fujiwara K., Yamamoto D.S., Kato H., Ohno N, & Yoshida S. (2021). Liver-Directed AAV8 Booster Vaccine Expressing Plasmodium falciparum Antigen Following Adenovirus Vaccine Priming Elicits Sterile Protection in a Murine Model. Frontiers in Immunology, 12, 612910.