PLoS Pathogens (Jan 2013)

Real-time whole-body visualization of Chikungunya Virus infection and host interferon response in zebrafish.

  • Nuno Palha,
  • Florence Guivel-Benhassine,
  • Valérie Briolat,
  • Georges Lutfalla,
  • Marion Sourisseau,
  • Felix Ellett,
  • Chieh-Huei Wang,
  • Graham J Lieschke,
  • Philippe Herbomel,
  • Olivier Schwartz,
  • Jean-Pierre Levraud

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1003619
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 9
p. e1003619

Abstract

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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.