20Airborne viruses and their relation to dust storms, as a possible route for dispersion, has 21 not been widely investigated. There are, however, studies that have described airborne

Transcriptional analysis of complex biological scenarios has been used extensively, even though sometimes the results of such analysis may prove imprecise or difficult to interpret due to an overwhelming amount of information. In this study, a large-scale real-time qPCR experiment was coupled to multivariate statistical analysis in order to describe the main immunological events underlying the early L. infantum infection in livers of BALB/c mice. High-throughput qPCR was used to evaluate the expression of 223 genes related to immunological response and metabolism 1, 3, 5, and 10 days post infection. This integrative analysis showed strikingly different gene signatures at 1 and 10 days post infection, revealing the progression of infection in the experimental model based on the upregulation of particular immunological response patterns and mediators. The gene signature 1 day post infection was not only characterized by the upregulation of mediators involved in interferon signaling and cell chemotaxis, but also the upregulation of some inhibitory markers. In contrast, at 10 days post infection, the upregulation of many inflammatory and Th1 markers characterized a more defined gene signature with the upregulation of mediators in the IL-12 signaling pathway. Our results reveal a significant connection between the expression of innate immune response and metabolic and inhibitory markers in early L. infantum infection of the liver.

Transcriptional analysis of complex biological scenarios has been extensively used, even though sometimes results may prove imprecise or difficult-to interpret due to an overwhelming amount of information. In this study, a large-scale Real-time qPCR experiment was coupled to multivariate statistical analysis to describe the main immunological events underlying the early L. infantum infection in livers of BALB/c mice. High-throughput qPCR was used to evaluate the expression of 223 genes related to immunometabolism 1-, 3-, 5- and 10-days post infection. This integrative analysis showed strikingly different gene signatures at 1- and 10-days post infection, revealing progression of infection in the experimental model based on the upregulation of particular immunological response patterns and mediators. This approach addresses the challenge of integrating large collections of transcriptional data for the identification of candidate biomarkers in experimental models.