Systemic analysis of tissue cells potentially vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection by the protein-proofed single-cell RNA profiling of ACE2, TMPRSS2 and Furin proteases

Lulin Zhou; Zubiao Niu; Xiaoyi Jiang; Zhengrong Zhang; You Zheng; Zhongyi Wang; Yichao Zhu; Lihua Gao; Xiaoning Wang; Qiang Sun

The expression of TMPRSS2 and Furin are generally also high in ACE2-high group tissues ( Figure 2D -E, S2B-D) with exception for testis, where TMPRSS2 seems to be only highly enriched in the spermatids ( Figure 2F ). For the ACE2-low group, TMPRSS2 and Furin are also expressed in low levels ( Figure S2A , S2E-F) with exception for liver, the hepatocytes in which express Furin in quite high level ( Figure 2C ). For the ACE2-median group, while Furin is readily detected in all the tissue cells, TMPRSS2 expression could be readily detected in lung macrophages ( Together, based on the above analysis, we propose that lung macrophages, in addition to the well-known AT2 cells, might be another direct target of SARS-CoV-2 virus. In the presence of viremia, the top vulnerable targets might be heart and adrenal gland, and then the less likely testis, ovary and thyroid gland. Other tissues are either unlikely direct targets or incompetent for establishing efficient infection due to lack of access to virus or low expression of helping proteases.