Comparative Transcriptomics in Ebola-Makona infected Ferrets, Non-human Primates, and Humans

The domestic ferret has recently been described as a uniformly lethal model of infection for three species of Ebolavirus known to be pathogenic to humans. Reagents to systematically analyze the ferret host response to infection are lacking; however, the recent publication of a draft ferret genome has opened the potential for transcriptional analysis of ferret models of disease. In this work, we present comparative analysis of longitudinally sampled blood taken from ferrets and non-human primates infected with lethal doses of the Makona strain of Zaire ebolavirus. Strong induction of proinflammatory and prothrombotic signaling programs were present in both ferrets and non-human primates and both transcriptomes were similar to previously published datasets of fatal cases of human Ebola virus infection. Whole blood RNA-Sequencing from ferrets infected with Ebola Virus Makona variant