Rhinovirus infection in genetically modified mice

IL-15Rα^−/− mice on a B6.129 background, B6.129 control mice (both purchased from the Jackson Laboratory, USA) and IFNAR1^−/− mice on a C57BL/6 background were bred in house under specific pathogen-free conditions. Balb/c and C57BL/6 control mice were purchased from Harlan (Harlan-Sprague-Dawley, UK). Rhinovirus sertotype 1B (RV-1B) obtained from the American Type Culture Collection was grown in HeLa cells (European Collection of Cell Cultures) and purified for in vivo use as previously described ^{9 (link)}. The virus was inactivated by exposure to UV light at 1,200mJ/cm² for 30 min. Mice were lightly anaesthetised with isofluorane and infected intra-nasally (i.n.) with 50 μL of RV-1B (5×10⁶ TCID₅₀) or PBS (mock-infected represented as 0 h in time course studies. All mouse experiments were performed using 6-8 week old mice, and only female mice were used in studies involving wt Balb/c, wt B6.129 and IL-15Rα^−/− mice, and males and females were used in studies involving wt C57BL/6 and IFNAR1^−/− mice.