Researchers at MIT; the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard; and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; together with associates from around the world have identified specific kinds of cells that appear to be targets of the coronavirus that is causing the Covid-19 pandemic.
Utilizing existing data on the RNA discovered in various types of cells, the scientists had the ability to search for cells that express the 2 proteins that help the SARS-CoV-2 virus enter human cells. They found subsets of cells in the lung, the nasal passages, and the intestinal tract that reveal RNA for both of these proteins far more than other cells.
The scientists hope that their findings will help assist researchers who are dealing with developing brand-new drug treatments or testing existing drugs that could be repurposed for treating Covid-19
” Our objective is to get info out to the neighborhood and to share information as quickly as is humanly possible, so that we can help speed up ongoing efforts in the scientific and medical neighborhoods,” says Alex K. Shalek, the Pfizer-Laubach Career Advancement Partner Teacher of Chemistry, a core member of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), an extramural member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research study, an associate member of the Ragon Institute, and an institute member at the Broad Institute.
Shalek and Jose Ordovas-Montanes, a former MIT postdoc who now runs his own lab at Boston Children’s Health center, are the senior authors of the study, which appears today in Cell The paper’s lead authors are MIT college students Carly Ziegler, Samuel Allon, and Sarah Nyquist; and Ian Mbano, a scientist at the Africa Health Research Study Institute in Durban, South Africa.
Going into information
Not long after the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak began, researchers discovered that the viral “spike” protein binds to a receptor on human cells known as angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2).
” As quickly as we recognized that the role of these proteins had been biochemically confirmed, we began wanting to see where those genes remained in our existing datasets,” Ordovas-Montanes states. “We were truly in a great position to begin to investigate which are the cells that this infection may in fact target.”
Shalek’s laboratory, and lots of other labs around the world, have actually carried out massive research studies of 10s