The gene expression profiles in BALB/3T3 cells during ECTV infection

Ectromelia virus (ECTV) has emerged as a valuable model for investigating the host-orthopoxvirus relationship as it relates to pathogenesis and the immune response. We analyzed the transcriptional signatures of BALB/3T3 cells at different times after infection with Ectromelia virus. Mouse Genome 430 2.0 arrays were used to analyze global changes in gene transcripts to generate a pool of genes that was a fold change cut-off of ≥ 1.5 or ≤ 0.5 in infected samples versus non-infected samples. Gene ontology and KEGG pathway analysis showed that the DEGs were involved mainly in immunity, apoptosis, spliceosomes, MAPK signaling and cancer-related pathways. 5×10^5 BALB/3T3 cells were seeded in each well of a 6-well plate and infected in triplicate with ECTV at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 1. Control cells were mock infected with virus-free DMEM. All infected and control cells were incubated in complete DMEM at 37 °C in 5% CO2 and harvested for total RNA extraction at 6 (BT6), 12 (BT12), 24 (BT24), 48 (BT48), and 96 (BT96) h post infection (hpi). The non-infected at 0 hour (BT0) biological condition were used as an additional control.