Expression of immune-associated genes in splenic myeloid subsets before and after WNV-infection.

F4/80^hi MΦs, CD11b^- DCs, CD11b⁺ DCs or CD11b⁺SSC^lo MOs splenic subsets were isolated by cell sorting from either naïve B6 mice or from PBSL-treated mice infected 4 days previously with 1000 pfu WNV/Tx. RNA was isolated, after which expression of 108 immune-associated genes were determined (see Materials and Methods and Table A in S1 File). Heat maps show the gene expression/population for the 4 subsets relative to the total gene expression in myeloid cells obtained from (A) naïve mice (mean of 2 independent experiments) or (B) WNV-infected mice (mean of 3 experiments). Ratios were loaded into R statistical programming language (version 3.2.0). Pearson correlation was performed on ratios and displayed in R/Bioconductor using the gplots package. Gene expression/population shown is calculated as expression of the given population X the frequency of the same population in the spleen. Details of expression levels are available in Tables B and C in S1 File.