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

Second, the co-expression of infection co-factors determines the efficiency of successful infection. As for SARS-CoV-2, TMPRSS2 and Furin were demonstrated to be important proteases that cleave the S protein to promote host entry [13, 14, 16] . Threrefore, their co-expression with ACE2, the cellular receptor for SARS-CoV-2, may dictate the vulnerability of the target tissues. Actually, we found that some ACE2-high cells, such as stromal cells in testis and ovary, express TMPRSS2 at quite low levels ( Figure 2F-G) , suggesting that they may not be SARS-CoV-2 targets as susceptible as those co-expressing both ACE2 and TMPRSS2/Furin proteases, such as heart though cardiomyocytes express relatively lower level of ACE2. It's conceivable that cells highly co-expressing ACE2, TMPRSS2 and Furin proteases, such as lung macrophages and stromal cells in adrenal gland, would be readily vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 attack in the presence of viruses.