Fig. 6. Effect of Bcl-2 expression and caspase inhibition on survival of HeLa cells transfected with different GFP-clusterin chimeras. The expression of Bcl-2 was induced or not in cells containing a tetracycline-regulated inducible Bcl-2 gene and transfected with one of the indicated constructs. (A) 24 hours after transfection, fluorescent transfected cells were analysed by fluorimetry based on their size and density. The proportion of small cells with highly condensed cytoplasm (left in cytograms) was increased after transfection with GFP-SP-clu, GFP--clu and GFP-ß-clu compared with GFP alone. This proportion was lower in cells overexpressing Bcl-2 after tetracycline removal (right) (percentages correspond to only one experiment). (B) Proportion of variation of small GFP-positive transfected cells after Bcl-2 induction (black bars) or not (white bars) were calculated from three independent transfection experiments. Each bar represents the mean±s.d. (n=3). ^*P<0.05 significantly different from control values; NS, not significantly different in Student's t-test.