Fig. 3

WNV infection reprograms host bioenergetics towards increased glycolysis in mouse neural tissues. A Experimental design and sample collection. Mice were intraperitoneally infected with 10⁴ PFU of WNV and humanly euthanized at 7 days after infection (n = 6). Brain and cerebellum were harvested for transcriptomic analyses. Figure was created with BioRender. B WNV alters the transcriptomic profile in the CNS. Virus load was quantified in the brain and cerebellum hemisphere by RT-qPCR at 3, 7 and 10 days after infection. The changes in the number of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) with |FC|> = 2 and FDR corrected P < 0.05 are indicated. Upregulated denotes FC > 2 and downregulated FC < 2 over uninfected animals. C Assessment of immune cell activation and infiltration in the brain and the cerebellum of WNV-infected mice by using bulk RNA-seq expression data to estimate the abundance of cell types during the progress of WNV neuroinvasion with CellKb. D DEGs related to energy metabolism in the glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation in the brain and cerebellum of infected animals. The list of DEGs in WNV-infected tissues was filtered for genes available. Reactome pathways of glycolysis, pyruvate metabolism and TCA cycle, pentose phosphate pathway and respiratory electron transport to identify energy-related DEGs. Heat maps indicate the fold change of identified DEGs at each time post-infection