MIT: Nasal and lungs are weak points, new crown virus focuses on "attack"

PHOENIX, April 23 (Xinhua) -- MIT and Harvard researchers, along with their counterparts from around the world, have discovered which types of cells are attacked by the new coronavirus.

Using RNA (ribonucleic acid) in different types of cells, the researchers have found cells that express proteins that help the new coronavirus infect human cells. The presence of these cells was found in the lungs, nasal passages and intestines.

The researchers hope that their study will help other researchers to develop specific drugs for neo-coronavirus pneumonia or to test existing drugs.

MIT researcher Alex K. Shalek said, "Our goal is to make as much information as possible available to the scientific community, share the data with them and help the scientific and medical communities respond more quickly to the New Crown outbreak."

The journal Cell published the findings today.

Mining existing data to discover attacked cells

Soon after the emergence of New Coronavirus pneumonia, scientists discovered that New Coronavirus binds to a human cellular receptor known as ACE2; another human protein, known as TMPRSS2, helps activate the New Coronavirus stinger protein, allowing it to enter human cells.

Knowing the role of these proteins in the pathogenesis of New Coronavirus pneumonia, we started looking for genes that express them in existing databases," said researcher Jose Ordovas-Montanes. We are uniquely positioned to investigate which cells are attacked by the new coronavirus."

Salik's lab has studied tens of thousands of human, non-human primate and murine cells to discover which genes are expressed using single RNA sequencing technology. Since last year, researcher Sarah Nyquist has been building databases that store large numbers of similar data sets, facilitating researchers to study the role of different cells in various infectious diseases.

The MIT research team studied datasets containing hundreds of cells in the lungs, nasal passages and intestines because previous studies on New Coronary Pneumonia demonstrated that these organs are subject to viral attack.

Because of the knowledge of previous relevant studies, we were able to be more targeted when looking for cells attacked by the New Coronavirus," Salik said. Although these data sets were not originally intended to study New Coronavirus pneumonia, they were a great help to us."

The researchers found that cupped cells in the nasal passages that express RNA for two proteins that neo-coronaviruses use to infect host cells; RNA that expresses both of these proteins is present in type II alveolar cells in the lungs.

They found that the absorptive cells expressed more RNA of the two aforementioned proteins than other cells in the intestine.

Odovas-Montanez said, "This study may not have fully revealed the types of cells that are attacked by the new coronavirus, but considerable progress has been made in this regard. We can now confidently say that these cells in these organs are subject to neo-coronavirus attack."

Another unexpected finding of their study is that neo-coronaviruses have evolved to take advantage of the host cell's own immune function, using certain proteins of the host cell. (Author/Frostbite)