Pathway enrichments from untargeted metabolomics of plasma of Peromyscus leucopus and Mus musculus with or without LPS treatment

Animals that are competent reservoirs of zoonotic pathogens commonly suffer little morbidity from the infections. To investigate mechanisms of this tolerance of infection, we used single-dose lipopolysaccharide (LPS) as an experimental model of inflammation and compared the responses by two rodents: Peromyscus leucopus, white-footed deermouse and reservoir for agents of Lyme disease and other zoonoses, and the house mouse Mus musculus. Four hours after injection with LPS or saline, blood, spleen and liver samples were collected and subjected to RNA-seq, metabolomics, and specific RT-qPCR. Untargeted metabolomics identified several pathways that deermice and mice have in common in their responses to LPS, but also pathways in which they differed. The accompanying dataset is of 72 pathways which were identified in the plasma of both P. leucopus and M. musculus and those that were enriched in one species or another in response to LPS and those that were not differentially enriched. The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG; https://www.genome.jp/kegg/) terms for the compounds of a particular pathway and that were identified in P. leucopus and/or in M. musculus are listed.