Primary CD34+ HPCs were infected with HCMV at a multiplicity of 2 p.f.u per cell. The ultraviolet-inactivated virus was used as mock infection. At 14 dpi, the infected cells were harvested. Total RNA was extracted with TRIzol (Sigma-Aldrich) and subjected to the analysis with PrimeView Human Gene Expression Array (Affymetrix)44 (link),45 (link). A Nanodrop 2000 spectrophotometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.) was used to measure the optical density values (A260/A280) of the samples, and electrophoresis of the 28S/18S bands was conducted to assess the quality of the total RNA samples. Following overnight hybridization, the chips were washed and stained according to the manufacturer’s protocols. The hybridized chips were scanned by Affymetrix GeneChip Scanner 3000 7G. The differentially expressed gene sets between experimental groups and controls were analysed by significance analysis of microarray. The gene sets were considered as significant if a false discovery rate < 0.05 and the fold changes (experimental groups versus controls) were larger than 2 or less than 0.5.