Fig. 4. ZIKV infects and triggers innate immune responses in human colon cells.

a Expression levels of cytokines and chemokines in sera from ZIKV anally-infected Ifnar1^−/− mice (10⁶ PFU/mouse), analyzed by Luminex assay at 7 dpi. The average expression levels of cytokines from 3 mice are shown. b Relative expression levels of the 30 innate immune response genes in human colon cells (HT-29) most upregulated by ZIKV infection. The cells were infected with ZIKV (GZ01 strain, MOI 0.5) for 24 h, and total RNA was extracted and analyzed by RNA-seq. c, d Pathways for the up- (c) or down- (d) regulated genes enriched by gene ontology pathway analysis. "-" means "negative". e The mRNA expression levels of IFNB, MX1, and IP-10 in ZIKV-infected (GZ01 strain, MOI 1) HT-29 cells were measured by qRT-PCR at the indicated time points. All data are shown as the mean ± SEM. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, unpaired Student’s t-test