London: Scientists have identified two specific cell types in the nose as likely initial infection points for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The researchers, including those from the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK and University Medical Centre Groningen in the Netherlands, discovered that goblet and ciliated cells in the nose have high levels of the entry proteins that the COVID-19 virus uses to get into our cells.
The identification of these cells could help explain the high transmission rate of COVID-19, they said. The finding, published in the journal Nature Medicine, shows that cells in the eye and some other organs also contain the viral-entry proteins.
The study also predicts how a key entry protein is regulated with other immune system genes and reveals potential targets for the development of treatments to reduce transmission. While it is known that the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, known as SARS-CoV-2, uses a similar mechanism to infect our cells as a related coronavirus that caused the 2003 SARS epidemic, the exact cell types involved in the nose had not previously been pinpointed, the researchers said.
To discover which cells could be involved in COVID-19 transmission, they analysed datasets of single cell RNA sequencing, from more than 20 different tissues of non-infected people. These included cells from the lung, nasal cavity, eye, gut, heart, kidney and liver.
No comments:
Post a Comment