Transcriptional profiles of WNV neurovirulence in a genetically diverse Collaborative Cross population

West Nile Virus (WNV) is a mosquito-transmitted virus from the Flaviviridae family that causes fever in 1 in 5 infected people. WNV can also become neuro-invasive and cross the blood-brain barrier leading to severe neurological symptoms in a subset of WNV infected individuals [1]. WNV neuro-invasion is believed to be influenced by a number of factors including host genetics. In order to explore these effects and recapitulate the complex immune genetic differences among individuals, we studied gene expression following WNV infection in the Collaborative Cross (CC) model. The CC is a mouse genetics resource composed of > 70 independently bred, octo-parental recombinant inbred mouse lines [2]. To identify the individual host gene expression signatures influencing protection or susceptibility to WNV disease and WNV neuroinvasion, we used the nanostring nsolver platform to quantify gene expression in brain tissue isolated from WNV-infected CC mice at days 4, 7 and 12 post-infection [3]. This nanostring technology provided a high throughput, non-amplification based mRNA quantitation method to detect immune genes involved in neuro-invasion. Data was deposited into the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) under accession GSE85999.