Does the human placenta express the canonical cell entry mediators for SARS-CoV-2?
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has affected more than 10 million people, including pregnant women. To date, no consistent evidence for the vertical transmission of SARS-CoV-2 exists. The novel coronavirus canonically utilizes the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor and the serine protease TMPRSS2 for cell entry. Herein, building upon our previous single-cell study (Pique-Regi et al., 2019), another study, and new single-cell/nuclei RNA-sequencing data, we investigated the expression of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 throughout pregnancy in the placenta as well as in third-trimester chorioamniotic membranes. We report that co-transcription of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 is negligible in the placenta, thus not a likely path of vertical transmission for SARS-CoV-2. By contrast, receptors for Zika virus and cytomegalovirus, which cause congenital infections, are highly expressed by placental cell types. These data show that the placenta minimally expresses the canonical cell-entry mediators for SARS-CoV-2.
Article activity feed
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.18.101485: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Data availability: Placenta and decidua scRNA-seq data from first-trimester samples were downloaded through ArrayExpress (E-MTAB-6701). ArrayExpresssuggested: (ArrayExpress, RRID:SCR_002964)Visualization of viral receptor gene expression was performed using the ggplot2 [104] package in R with gene expression values scaled to transcripts per million (TPM). ggplot2suggested: (ggplot2, RRID:SCR_014601)The mas5calls function from the affy package in Bioconductor was used to determine … SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.18.101485: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Data availability: Placenta and decidua scRNA-seq data from first-trimester samples were downloaded through ArrayExpress (E-MTAB-6701). ArrayExpresssuggested: (ArrayExpress, RRID:SCR_002964)Visualization of viral receptor gene expression was performed using the ggplot2 [104] package in R with gene expression values scaled to transcripts per million (TPM). ggplot2suggested: (ggplot2, RRID:SCR_014601)The mas5calls function from the affy package in Bioconductor was used to determine presence above background of each probeset corresponding to a given gene [105]. affysuggested: (affy, RRID:SCR_012835)Bioconductorsuggested: (Bioconductor, RRID:SCR_006442)Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
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:- No conflict of interest statement was detected. If there are no conflicts, we encourage authors to explicit state so.
- No funding statement was detected.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
-