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

For tissue distribution of mRNA and protein expression profiles, data were obtained for target genes from the "TISSUE" categories of "THE HUMAN PROTEIN ATLAS" (http://www.proteinatlas.org/) [35] . The mRNA expression from GTEx dataset were chosen for demonstration with reference to the normalized consensus dataset [36] . The protein expression scores were extracted from the "PROTEIN EXPRESSION SUMMARY" subcategory. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining was performed on normal human tissue samples [37] . ACE2 expression were primarily detected with rabbit antibody (1:250, HPA000288, Sigma-Aldrich) and confirmed with mouse antibody (1:5000, CAB026174, R&D Systems); TMPRSS2 expression were detected with rabbit antibody (1:300, HPA035787, Sigma-Aldrich); Furin expression were detected with rabbit antibody (1:125, sc-20801, Santa Cruz Biotechnology). The information on expression intensity and cell types expressing respective genes were extracted from the staining reports for each staining in the database.