Pathogen Gene Expression Profiling During Infection Using a Nanostring nCounter Platform.

NanoString nCounter is a recently developed platform that can make direct multiplexed measurement of gene expression using color-coded probe pairs (Geiss et al., Nat Biotechnol 26(3):317-325, 2008; Malkov et al., BMC Res Notes 2:80, 2009). We have found that this platform is uniquely suitable for quantification of pathogen gene expression during infection, where pathogen RNA comprises a tiny portion of total RNA isolated from the infected tissue. Here, we describe a protocol that we have successfully applied to a number of pathogens across multiple infection models, including both invasive and mucosal infection by Candida albicans, and lung infection by Aspergillus fumigatus and Cryptococcus neoformans.