Mice Infection With BDBV and EBOV/BDBV-GP Viruses

The animal protocols for experiments with mice were approved by the UTMB Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). The experiments were performed in the Animal Biosafety Level 4 (ABSL-4) facility of the Galveston National Laboratory. Six- to 7 week-old STAT1 KO mice (129S6/SvEv-Stat1^tm1Rds, Taconic Biosciences) at 4–5 animals per group were injected intraperitoneally with 1000 plaque-forming units (PFU) of BDBV or EBOV/BDBV-GP and monitored daily for 28 days. After the onset of symptoms, animals were observed twice a day. The extent of disease was scored using the following parameters: dyspnea (possible score, 0–5), recumbence (0–5), unresponsiveness (0–5), and bleeding/hemorrhage (0–5). Moribund mice were euthanized as per the IACUC-approved protocol. On day 28 after challenge, all remaining animals were euthanized.