The Interferon-induced Gene Ifi27l2a is Active in Lung Macrophages and Lymphocytes After Influenza A Infection but Deletion of Ifi27l2a in Mice Does Not Increase Susceptibility to Infection

Interferons represent one of the first and essential host defense mechanisms after infection, and the activation of the IFN-pathway results in the transcriptional activation of hundreds of interferon-stimulated genes. The alpha-inducible protein 27 like 2A (Ifi27l2a) gene (human synonym: ISG12) is strongly up-regulated in the lung after influenza A infection in mice and has been shown in gene expression studies to be highly correlated to other activated genes. Therefore, we investigated the role of Ifi27l2a for the host defense to influenza A infections in more detail. RT-PCR analyses in non-infected mice demonstrated that Ifi27l2a was expressed in several tissues, including the lung. Detailed analyses of reporter gene expression in lungs from Ifi27l2a-LacZ mice revealed that Ifi27l2a was expressed in macrophages and lymphocytes but not in alveolar cells or bronchiolar epithelium cells. The number of macrophages and lymphocyte strongly increased in the lung after infection, but no significant increase in expression levels of the LacZ reporter gene was found within individual immune cells. Also, no reporter gene expression was found in bronchiolar epithelial cells, alveolar cells or infiltrating neutrophils after infection. Thus, up-regulation of Ifi27l2a in infected lungs is mainly due to the infiltration of macrophages and lymphocytes. Most surprisingly, deletion of Ifi27l2a in mouse knock-out lines did not result in increased susceptibility to infections with H1N1 or H7N7 influenza A virus compared to wild type C57BL/6N mice, suggesting a less important role of the gene for the host response to influenza infections than for bacterial infections.