Experimental intestinal reovirus infection of mice: what we know, what we need to know

Abstract

Reovirus, a member of the Reoviridae family, is a ubiquitous virus in vertebrate hosts. Although disease caused by reovirus infection is for the most part mild, studies of reovirus have particularly been valuable as a model for understanding the local host response to replicating foreign antigen in intestinal and respiratory sites. In this article, a brief overview is presented of the basic features of reovirus infection, as will the host's humoral and cellular immune response during the infectious cycle. New information regarding the interactions and involvement of immune response molecules during reovirus infection will be presented based on multiple analyte array studies from our laboratory.

Fig. 1

Analysis of twenty-two immune response analytes produced by IELs from non-infected mice and IELs from mice 4 days after reovirus infection. Note the increase in synthesis of analytes in infected mice compared to non-infected animals. See Table 1 for identification of analytes in blot grids.

Fig. 2

Comparison of data from Fig. 1 after normalization using the positive and negative control values provided with the blotting membranes.