#CHIR 99021 ; #2520691 ;
iScience 26, 107690, September 15, 2023
Anthony Flamier 1, Punam Bisht 1, Alexsia Richards 1, Danielle L Tomasello 1, Rudolf Jaenisch 1 2
Affiliations expand
- PMID: 37680484
- PMCID: PMC10480666
- DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107690
Free PMC article
Abstract
COVID-19 has impacted billions of people since 2019 and unfolded a major healthcare crisis. With an increasing number of deaths and the emergence of more transmissible variants, it is crucial to better understand the biology of the disease-causing virus, the SARS-CoV-2. Peripheral neuropathies appeared as a specific COVID-19 symptom occurring at later stages of the disease. In order to understand the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on the peripheral nervous system, we generated human sensory neurons from induced pluripotent stem cells that we infected with the SARS-CoV-2 strain WA1/2020 and the variants delta and omicron. Using single-cell RNA sequencing, we found that human sensory neurons can be infected by SARS-CoV-2 but are unable to produce infectious viruses. Our data indicate that sensory neurons can be infected by the original WA1/2020 strain of SARS-CoV-2 as well as the delta and omicron variants, yet infectability differs between the original strain and the variants.