Regulation of the cholesterol pathway upon mCMV infection.

(A) The Sterol biosynthesis pathway shown in KEGG notation with abbreviated metabolites (abbreviations listed in Text S1). The geranylgeranylation pathway responsible for GGPP synthesis is shown in the dashed box. (B) Heat map of the cholesterol biosynthesis temporal genes' expression during the first 12 h of mCMV infection (left panel) or IFNγ treatment (right panel). Each time point corresponds to one independent biological sample, and columns indicate time in hours. Fold changes of expression levels are represented on a Log2 scale compared to mock-treated cells, ranging from a 0.8× lower expression (dark blue) to a 1.2× higher expression (bright yellow). (C–H) Expression analysis measured by qRT-PCR of Hmgcs1, Hmgcr, Idi1, and Sqle genes in BMDM infected with mCMV(24 hpi) (C) or treated for 24 h with IFNγ (10 and 100 U/ml) (D), IFNβ (10 and 25 U/ml) (E), IL6 (10 and 25 U/ml) (F), IL1β (10 and 100 U/ml) (G), or TNF (10 and 100 U/ml) (H). Graphs show levels of mRNA expression of the respective genes either infected or cytokines-treated relative to mock samples. Bars represent the means ± SD of five independent experiments with biological triplicates for each experiment. *pppt test.