Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-17-2021

Keywords

JGM

JAX Source

PLoS Biol 2021 Mar 17; 19(3):e3001143

Volume

19

Issue

3

First Page

3001143

Last Page

3001143

ISSN

1545-7885

PMID

33730024

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001143

Grant

AI133440, AI141609

Abstract

There are currently limited Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs and vaccines for the treatment or prevention of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Enhanced understanding of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and pathogenesis is critical for the development of therapeutics. To provide insight into viral replication, cell tropism, and host-viral interactions of SARS-CoV-2, we performed single-cell (sc) RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) of experimentally infected human bronchial epithelial cells (HBECs) in air-liquid interface (ALI) cultures over a time course. This revealed novel polyadenylated viral transcripts and highlighted ciliated cells as a major target at the onset of infection, which we confirmed by electron and immunofluorescence microscopy. Over the course of infection, the cell tropism of SARS-CoV-2 expands to other epithelial cell types including basal and club cells. Infection induces cell-intrinsic expression of type I and type III interferons (IFNs) and interleukin (IL)-6 but not IL-1. This results in expression of interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs) in both infected and bystander cells. This provides a detailed characterization of genes, cell types, and cell state changes associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection in the human airway.

Comments

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license

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