Microarray Analysis of West Nile Virus infected Human Retinal Pigment Epithelium

Low-level infection is believed to play a role in the degradation of the outer blood retinal barrier, which is composed of retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells. By investigating immunopathogenic West nile virus (WNV) infected RPE via microarray, we sought to find key genes involved in a low-level viral infection, which are vital for normal immune responses. We infected primary human RPE cells and an human RPE cell line with WNV and extracted RNA to hybridize onto Affymetrix arrays. We were interested in the global expression of differentially regulated genes in WNV infected RPE cells, at 24h post infection. We were also interested in seeing the differences in response between infected primaries and the infected ARPE19 cell line.