Real-time whole-body visualization of chikungunya virus infection and host interferon response in zebrafish
- Authors
- Palha, N., Guivel-Benhassine, F., Briolat, V., Lutfalla, G., Sourisseau, M., Ellett, F., Wang, C.H., Lieschke, G.J., Herbomel, P., Schwartz, O., and Levraud, J.P.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-130927-10
- Date
- 2013
- Source
- PLoS pathogens 9(9): e1003619 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Briolat, Valerie, Ellett, Felix, Herbomel, Philippe, Levraud, Jean-Pierre, Lieschke, Graham J., Lutfalla, Georges, Wang, Chieh-Huei
- Keywords
- Chikungunya infection, Zebrafish, Neutrophils, Larvae, Chikungunya virus, White blood cells, Hepatocytes, Macrophages
- MeSH Terms
-
- Zebrafish Proteins/biosynthesis*
- Disease Models, Animal
- Chikungunya Fever
- Interferon Type I/biosynthesis*
- Chikungunya virus/metabolism*
- PubMed
- 24039582 Full text @ PLoS Pathog.
Chikungunya Virus (CHIKV), a re-emerging arbovirus that may cause severe disease, constitutes an important public health problem. Herein we describe a novel CHIKV infection model in zebrafish, where viral spread was live-imaged in the whole body up to cellular resolution. Infected cells emerged in various organs in one principal wave with a median appearance time of ~14 hours post infection. Timing of infected cell death was organ dependent, leading to a shift of CHIKV localization towards the brain. As in mammals, CHIKV infection triggered a strong type-I interferon (IFN) response, critical for survival. IFN was mainly expressed by neutrophils and hepatocytes. Cell type specific ablation experiments further demonstrated that neutrophils play a crucial, unexpected role in CHIKV containment. Altogether, our results show that the zebrafish represents a novel valuable model to dynamically visualize replication, pathogenesis and host responses to a human virus.
