Virus- and interferon alpha-induced smallRNA-Seq transcriptomes of cells from the microbat Myotis daubentonii

These small RNA-Seq data set was generated to study the virus- and interferon alpha-induced immune response of M. daubentonii (microbat) kidney cells with a focus on small RNAs, especially miRNAs. For the virus challenge, a RVFV clone (Clone-13) was used. Total RNA from control (mock), interferon-alpha (IFN) or Rift Valley fever virus Clone 13 (Clone13) infected cells were isolated at two time points (6h, 24h) post treatment/infection. The quality and integrity of the RNA was controled by a Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer followed by deep sequencing. For each total RNA sample small RNA libraries were prepared utilizing the Illumina TruSeq smallRNA Kit (hereafter sRNA). Overall, 18 sRNA libraries were sequenced on one HiSeq 2500 lanes with 51 cycles resulting in ~10-20 million strand-specific single-end reads per sample. The complete experiment was performed in three independent, biological replicates. As no reference genome for M. daubentonii was available when conducting this study, we used the genome of the closely related microbat species M. lucifugus as a reference for mapping and quantification.