Susceptibility of swine cells and domestic pigs to SARS-CoV-2
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Abstract
The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 has resulted in an ongoing global pandemic with significant morbidity, mortality, and economic consequences. The susceptibility of different animal species to SARS-CoV-2 is of concern due to the potential for interspecies transmission, and the requirement for pre-clinical animal models to develop effective countermeasures. In the current study, we determined the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to (i) replicate in porcine cell lines, (ii) establish infection in domestic pigs via experimental oral/intranasal/intratracheal inoculation, and (iii) transmit to co-housed naive sentinel pigs. SARS-CoV-2 was able to replicate in two different porcine cell lines with cytopathic effects. Interestingly, none of the SARS-CoV-2-inoculated pigs showed evidence of clinical signs, viral replication or SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody responses. Moreover, none of the sentinel pigs displayed markers of SARS-CoV-2 infection. These data indicate that although different porcine cell lines are permissive to SARS-CoV-2, five-week old pigs are not susceptible to infection via oral/intranasal/intratracheal challenge. Pigs are therefore unlikely to be significant carriers of SARS-CoV-2 and are not a suitable pre-clinical animal model to study SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis or efficacy of respective vaccines or therapeutics.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.15.252395: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IACUC: Animal research was conducted in compliance with the Animal Welfare Act and other federal statutes and regulations relating to animal care and experimentation under protocol #4390, approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at Kansas State University on April 8, 2020. Randomization not detected. Blinding Following embedding, tissue sections were cut and stained with hematoxylin and eosin and evaluated by a board-certified veterinary pathologist who was blinded to the treatment groups. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable Eighteen pigs (mix of males and females, five weeks of age) were used in the study. Cell Line … SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.15.252395: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IACUC: Animal research was conducted in compliance with the Animal Welfare Act and other federal statutes and regulations relating to animal care and experimentation under protocol #4390, approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at Kansas State University on April 8, 2020. Randomization not detected. Blinding Following embedding, tissue sections were cut and stained with hematoxylin and eosin and evaluated by a board-certified veterinary pathologist who was blinded to the treatment groups. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable Eighteen pigs (mix of males and females, five weeks of age) were used in the study. Cell Line Authentication not detected. Table 2: Resources
Antibodies Sentences Resources Serological testing: To detect SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in sera, indirect ELISAs were performed using recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) expressed in HEK cells with a C-terminal Strep-Tag and the Nucleocapsid (N) protein expressed in E.coli with a C-terminal His-tag. His-tagsuggested: None100 μL anti-pig-IgG or IgM secondary antibodies, conjugated with peroxidase, were diluted 1:2,500 in blocking buffer and then incubated at room temperature for 1 hour, protected from light. anti-pig-IgGsuggested: NoneThe optical density (OD) value was measured at 450 nm within 5 minutes of adding the stop solution to quantify the amount of antigenbinding antibody present in the sample. antigenbindingsuggested: NoneSerum from pigs infected with African Swine Fever Virus (ASFV) and the baculovirus-expressed ASFV-p54 antigen were used as a positive control for anti-pig-IgG or IgM secondary antibodies. IgMsuggested: NoneExperimental Models: Cell Lines Sentences Resources The virus was passaged three times in VeroE6 cells (ATCC® CRL-1586™), before being passaged two times in swine testicle (ST; ATCC CRL-1746™) and four times in porcine kidney (PK-15; ATCC® CCL-33™) cell lines to investigate suitability of these swine cell lines for propagation of SARS-CoV-2. VeroE6suggested: NoneSerological testing: To detect SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in sera, indirect ELISAs were performed using recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) expressed in HEK cells with a C-terminal Strep-Tag and the Nucleocapsid (N) protein expressed in E.coli with a C-terminal His-tag. HEKsuggested: CLS Cat# 300192/p777_HEK293, RRID:CVCL_0045)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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