ABSTRACT: Swiss-Webster female mice (Charles River Laboratories, Wilmington, MA) 5-6 weeks of age were infected intranasally with 5 LD50 of either WT or Δlpp mutant of Y. pestis CO92. Uninfected mice were used as controls. At either 12 or 48 h post infection (p.i.), 3 mice per group were euthanized and the lungs, livers, and spleens were harvested and homogenized in 1 ml of RNALater (Ambion/Applied Biosystems, Austin, TX) using 50-ml tissue homogenizers (Kendell, Mansfield, MA). RNA was isolated from the tissue homogenates and purified using RNAqueous (Ambion). After an overnight precipitation, the RNA was resuspended in 20 ul of diethylpyrocarbonate (DEPC)-treated water and hybridized to Affymetrix GeneChip Mouse Genome 430 2.0 arrays, performed by the Molecular Genomics Core at UTMB Galveston, Texas, per manufacture protocols. The arrays had 45,000 probe sets representing more than 39,000 transcripts derived from ~34,000 well-substantiated mouse genes. The experiments were performed in triplicate (biological replicates), generating a total of 45 arrays. Experiment Overall Design: At either 12 or 48 h post infection (p.i.), 3 mice per group were euthanized and the lungs, livers, and spleens were harvested and homogenized in 1 ml of RNALater (Ambion/Applied Biosystems, Austin, TX) using 50-ml tissue homogenizers (Kendell, Mansfield, MA). RNA was isolated from the tissue homogenates and purified using RNAqueous (Ambion). After an overnight precipitation, the RNA was resuspended in 20 ul of diethylpyrocarbonate (DEPC)-treated water and hybridized to Affymetrix GeneChip Mouse Genome 430 2.0 arrays, performed by the Molecular Genomics Core at UTMB Galveston, Texas, per manufacture protocols.
