Which Organs Likely Permit or Restrict Entry of SAR-CoV-2?
Author: May Thongthum
More than 9 months have elapsed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists still have very little clues about the wide range of clinical phenotypes observed in people infected with SARS-CoV-2. It remains unclear which of these pathologies are caused by direct infection or the organs affected or indirect effects mediated by inflammatory responses. A team of molecular biologists, consisting of Manvendra Singh, Vikas Bansal, and Cédric Feschotte, believes that to solve these questions, a better understanding of the tropism of the virus is required.
They profiled 28 SAR-CoV-2 and coronavirus-associated receptors and factors (SCARFs) using single-cell transcriptomics across various healthy human tissues. SCARFs include cellular factors both facilitating and restricting viral entry. Intestinal goblet cells, enterocytes and kidney proximal tubule cells appear highly permissive to SARS-CoV-2, consistent with clinical data. They found evidence that suggests males are vulnerable to virus infection due to the permissibility of spermatogonial cells and prostate endocrine cells to SAR-CoV-2 infection. Furthermore, both pro- and anti-viral factors are highly expressed in the nasal epithelium, with age-dependent variation. In addition, their analysis suggests that early embryonic and placental development are at moderate risk of infection, meaning that infants are also susceptible to viral transmission from an infected mother.
References:
Figure retrieved from Singh, M., Bansal, V., Feschotte, C., A single-cell RNA expression map of human coronavirus entry factors, Cell Reports (2020), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2020.10817
Article title: A single-cell RNA expression map of human coronavirus entry factors. https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(20)31164-5?utm_campaign=Coronavirus%202020&utm_content=139510651&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-18477428
