Figure 4.
Expression profile of regulatory immune genes during A.-salmonicida infection of rainbow trout. (A) We used discriminating primer pairs to determine the abundance of all irak3 variants in trout (filled columns) and the proportion of the full-length irak3 transcripts (open columns) in the liver (left panel), head kidney (central), and PBLs (right) of four individuals at the various time points after infection relative to uninfected fish (0 h; set as 1.0). Significant copy-number changes (p < 0.05) are marked with an asterisk (*); error bars indicate SEM. (B) The HeatMap illustrates the averaged fold-change values (according to the legend on the right) of the mRNA concentrations measured in the liver (left panel), head kidney (central), and PBLs (right) at the time points after infection indicated below the scheme relative to controls (set as 1.0). The quantified transcripts are listed as gene symbols on the left and categorized according to their affiliation to immune processes; orthologs whose expression is IRAK3-dependent in mammals according to Zhou et al. (5) are marked in red. Significant copy-number changes (p < 0.05) are underlined. All expression values were normalized against the geometric means of the reference genes eef1a1 and rps5 as evaluated with the qBase+ software.