| First Author | Bost P | Year | 2020 |
| Journal | Cell | Volume | 181 |
| Issue | 7 | Pages | 1475-1488.e12 |
| PubMed ID | 32479746 | Mgi Jnum | J:291460 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:6441226 | Doi | 10.1016/j.cell.2020.05.006 |
| Citation | Bost P, et al. (2020) Host-Viral Infection Maps Reveal Signatures of Severe COVID-19 Patients. Cell 181(7):1475-1488.e12 |
| abstractText | 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. |
