Transcriptomic responses to influenza A virus infection in guinea pigs and ferrets

Ferrets and guinea pigs are both used to model influenza virus infection, disease. and transmission in humans; however, relatively little is known about their innate immune responses to influenza, compared to the better-studied mouse model, We intranasally inoculated guinea pigs and ferrets with influenza A/Netherlands/602/2009 (HINI pdm09), or phosphate-buffered saline as a mock-infection control, and then collected nasal turbinate, trachea, lung, and blood tissues from these animals (n=3 per species per time point) at 24, 48, 72, and 96 hours post-inoculation. We isolated total mRNA from the tissue samples, reverse-transcribed mRNA into cDNA, and then sequenced cDNA as paired-end reads on the Illumina platform. We also performed a smaller pilot experiment with influenza A/Panama/2007/19gg (H3N2) in guinea pigs only, collecting nasal turbinate and lung tissues from virus- and mock-infected guinea pigs (n=3 per condition) at 48 hours post-inoculation.