%0 Journal Article
%T Real-Time Whole-Body Visualization of Chikungunya Virus Infection and Host Interferon Response in Zebrafish
%A Nuno Palha
%A Florence Guivel-Benhassine
%A Val¨Śrie Briolat
%A Georges Lutfalla
%A Marion Sourisseau
%A Felix Ellett
%A Chieh-Huei Wang
%A Graham J. Lieschke
%A Philippe Herbomel
%A Olivier Schwartz
%A Jean-Pierre Levraud
%J PLOS Pathogens
%D 2013
%I Public Library of Science (PLoS)
%R 10.1371/journal.ppat.1003619
%X 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.
%U http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1003619