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Host-Viral Infection Maps Reveal Signatures of Severe COVID-19 Patients

Pierre Bost, Amir Giladi, Yang Liu, Yanis Bendjelal, Gang Xu, Eyal David, Ronnie Blecher-Gonen, Merav Cohen, Chiara Medaglia, Hanjie Li, Aleksandra Deczkowska, Shuye Zhang, Benno Schwikowski, Zheng Zhang, Ido Amit

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Viruses are a constant threat to global health as highlighted by the current COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, lack of data underlying how the human host interacts with viruses, including the SARS-CoV-2 virus, limits effective therapeutic intervention. We introduce Viral-Track, a computational method that globally scans unmapped single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data for the presence of viral RNA, enabling transcriptional cell sorting of infected versus bystander cells. We demonstrate the sensitivity and specificity of Viral-Track to systematically detect viruses from multiple models of infection, including hepatitis B virus, in an unsupervised manner Applying Viral-Track to bronchoalveloar-lavage samples from severe and mild COVID-19 patients reveals a dramatic impact of the virus on the immune system of severe patients compared to mild cases. Viral-Track detects an unexpected co-infection of the human metapneumovirus, present mainly in monocytes perturbed in type-I interferon (IFN)-signaling. Viral-Track provides a robust technology for dissecting the mechanisms of viral-infection and pathology.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1475-1488
Number of pages14
JournalCell
Volume181
Issue number7
Early online date8 May 2020
DOIs
StatePublished - 25 Jun 2020

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Biochemistry,Genetics and Molecular Biology

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