Reversibility of long-term changes to pulmonary function post early life respiratory viral infection

Respiratory viral infections in early life are associated with the development of lung diseases that can persist into adulthood, but the underlying mechanisms are not well understood.We aimed to characterise virus-induced changes to pulmonary gene networks that are linked to impairement of lung development and function. Male and female BALB/c mice were inoculated at seven days of life with either Influenza A/Puerto Rico/8/34 (H1N1), Influenza A/Memphis/1/71 (H3N2) or phosphate buffered saline (PBS), and randomly sacrificed seven, fourteen and twenty-eight days post inoculation. Bulk RNAseq was performed on whole lung tissue for each sex, experimental group and timepoint. Overall design: 144 samples in total: 8 samples per sex, per experimental group, per timepoint. 72 samples for males, 72 samples for females. 48 samples for seven days post-inoculation, 48 samples for fourteen days post-inoculation, 48 samples for twenty-eight days post-inoculation. 48 samples for Influenza A/Puerto Rico/8/34, 48 samples for Influenza A/Memphis/1/71, 48 samples for phosphate-buffered saline.