Next Generation Sequencing Facilitates Quantitative Analysis of Mock/ZIKV Infected AG6 Mice Olfactory Mucosa and Olfactory Bulb Transcriptomes

In this work, we demonstrate that neonatal mice infected with ZIKV via intracranial injection suffers from transient olfactory dysfunction when they grow up to puberty. Moreover, ZIKV exhibits broad cellular tropism and mainly targets the olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) in the olfactory mucosa (OM) of mice. To decipher the underlying mechanism of the observed olfactory dysfunction in ZIKV infected mice at the molecular level, RNA-Seq analyses of the OM and OB samples from ZIKV infected mice were performed in comparison with that from the control animals. To investigate the comprehensive cellular response induced by ZIKV infection in olfactory tissues at the molecular level, we carried out global transcriptome analyses of mouse OM and OB infected (3- and 5- dpi) with ZIKV in comparison with the mock-treated group.