Global gene expression changes in BV2 microglial cell line during rabies virus infection

Microglia plays a crucial role during virus pathogenesis in the central nervous system (CNS). Infection by rabies virus (RABV) causes a fatal infection in the CNS of all warm-blooded animals. However, the microglial responses to RABV infection have been scarcely reported. To better understand microglia-RABV interactions at the transcriptional level, a genome wide gene expression profile in mouse microglial cells line BV2 was performed using microarray analysis. The global messenger RNA changes in murine microglial cell line BV2 after 12, 24 and 48 h of infection with rabies virus CVS-11 strain were investigated using DNA Microarray and quantitative real-time PCR. Infection of CVS-11 at different time points induced different gene expression signatures in BV2 cells. The expression patterns of differentially expressed genes are shown by K-means clustering in four clusters in RABV- or mock-infected microglia at 12, 24 and 48h post infection (hpi). Gene ontology and network analysis of the differentially expressed genes in responses to RABV were performed by the Ingenuity Pathway Analysis system (IPA, Ingenuity® Systems, http://www.ingenuity.com). The results revealed that 28 genes were significantly up-regulated (P<0.01) and 1 gene was significantly down-regulated (P<0.01) in microglial cells at 12hpi, 72 genes were significantly up-regulated (P<0.01) and 24 genes were significantly down-regulated (P<0.01) at 24hpi, and 671 genes were significantly up-regulated (P<0.01) and 190 genes were significantly down-regulated (P<0.01) at 48hpi. Genes in BV2 were significantly regulated (P<0.01) in response to RABV infection and they were found to be interferon stimulated genes (Isg15, Isg20, Oasl1, Oasl2, Ifit2, Irf7 and Ifi203), chemokine genes (Ccl5, Cxcl10 and Ccrl2) and the proinflammatory factor gene (Interleukin 6). The results indicated that the differentially expressed genes from microglial cells after RABV infection were mainly involved in innate immune responses, inflammatory responses and host antiviral responses.