Insights into host responses against pathogens from transcriptional profiling.

Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, 9 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA. rjenner@wi.mit.edu

DNA microarrays have allowed us to monitor the effects of pathogens on host-cell gene expression programmes in great depth and on a broad scale. The comparison of results that have been generated by these studies is complex, and such a comparison has not previously been attempted in a systematic manner. In this review, we have collated and compared published transcriptional-profiling data from 32 studies that involved 77 different host-pathogen interactions, and have defined a common host-transcriptional-response. We outline gene expression patterns in the context of Toll-like receptor and pathogen-mediated signalling pathways, and summarize the contributions that transcriptional-profiling studies have made to our understanding of the infectious disease process.

PMID: 15806094 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]