Figure 1

Activation of synovial fibroblast-like cells by heat shock factor. Gel mobility-shift assay of heat shock factor (HSF)-1 DNA binding in human synovial fibroblast-like cells. HSF-1/DNA complexes are not present in unstimulated cells (control), whereas shear stress, and also heat stress, lead to a strong increase in the DNA-binding activity of HSF-1. Specific binding can be blocked by an excess of unlabelled oligonucleotide; unlabelled oligonucleotide inhibition (COI) is the ratio of unlabelled to labelled oligonucleotide (50:1, 10:1 and 1:1).