Project description:West Nile virus (WNV) is the most important cause of endemic encephalitis in the USA. Strikingly, only a small percentage of patients develop clinical disease and of these patients, approximately 1 out of 150 patients develops encephalitis. The basis for this great variability in disease outcome is unknown, but may be related to the innate immune response. Innate immune responses, critical for control of WNV infection, are initiated by signaling through pathogen recognition receptors (PRR) such as RIG-I and MDA5. IPS-1 is a key adaptor in generating a PRR-dependent interferon response.. Here we show that IPS-1 deficiency in hematopoietic cells resulted in increased mortality and delayed WNV clearance from the brain. In IPS-1-/- mice, a dysregulated immune response was detected, characterized by a massive influx of macrophages and virus-specific T cells into the infected brain. These T cells were multifunctional and were able to lyse peptide-pulsed target cells in vitro. However, virus-specific T cells in the infected IPS-1-/- brain exhibited lower functional avidity than those in C57BL/6 brains, possibly contributing to less efficient virus clearance. The presence of virus-specific memory T cells was also not protective. We also show that macrophages were increased in numbers in the IPS-1-/- brain. Both macrophages and microglia exhibited an activated phenotype. Microarray analyses showed the preferential upregulation of genes associated with leukocyte activation and inflammation. Together, these results demonstrate the critical role that hematopoietic cell expression of Type 1 interferon and other IPS-1-dependent molecules have in WNV clearance and in regulating the inflammatory response. We used 4 mice in each group. STI knockout mice developed lethath encephalitis after WNV infectin. WT mice which have mild disease after WNV were used as controls.
Project description:Transcriptomic profiling of the brains of WNV and CHIKV infection-induced encephalitis in young mice after 2, 3 or 5 days post infection
Project description:Although type III interferons (IFN), also known as IFN-λ or IL28/IL-29, restrict infection by several viruses, their mechanism of inhibitory action has remained uncertain. We used recombinant IFN-λ and mice lacking the IFN-λ receptor (IFNLR1) to evaluate the effect of IFN-λ on infection with West Nile virus (WNV), an encephalitic flavivirus. Cell culture studies in keratinocytes and dendritic cells showed no direct antiviral effect of exogenous IFN-λ even though ISGs were induced. Correspondingly, we observed no differences in WNV burden between wild-type and Ifnlr1-/- mice in the draining lymph node, spleen, and blood. However, we detected earlier dissemination and increased WNV infection in the brain and spinal cord of Ifnlr1-/- mice, yet this was not associated with a direct antiviral effect on infection of neurons. Instead, an increase in blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability was observed in Ifnlr1-/- mice. Accordingly, treatment of mice with pegylated IFN-λ2 resulted in decreased BBB permeability, reduced WNV infection in the brain without impacting viremia, and improved survival against lethal virus challenge. An in vitro model of the BBB showed that IFN-λ signaling in brain microvascular endothelial cells increased transendothelial electrical resistance, decreased virus movement across the barrier, and modulated tight junction protein localization in a protein synthesis- and STAT1-independent manner. Our data establish a novel indirect antiviral function of IFN-λ in which non-canonical signaling through IFNLR1 tightens the BBB and restricts viral neuroinvasion and pathogenesis. This finding suggests new clinical applications for IFN-λ in treating viral or autoimmune diseases. Transcriptome profiling of bone-marrow derived Dendritic cells(BMDCs), treated with either Serum Free Media(Mock), interferon beta(IFNb), or interferon lambda(IFNL) for 6 hours.
Project description:To investigate the in vivo metabolic changes during WNV infection in a mouse model, we infected mice with WNV NY99 to compare to uninfected (mock) mice. We also use two compounds targeting energetic metabolism to analysed their effects on WNV infection We then performed gene expression profiling analysis using data obtained from RNA-seq from infected vs uninfected mice and treated mice.