Project description:Purpose: The goals of this study are to monitor the evolution pattern of SARS-CoV2 in depending host cells by viral transcriptome sequencing analysis of Vero, A549, Caco2, and HRT18 cells infected with SARS-CoV2. Methods: SARS-CoV-2 isolate was passaged 4 time on Vero cells and used to extract RNA for the high-throughput sequencing. The 8×104 PFU of SARS-CoV2 stocks passaged on vero cells were inoculated to the monolayer of A549, CaCO2, and HRT-18 cell lines in 75T flask for 1hour at 37℃ in a 5% CO2 incubator with gentle shaking of 15 minutes interval. After that, the infected cells were washed two times with DPBS and incubated with the fresh maintenance medium for 3 days. The virus inoculation was performed in triplicate for each cell lines. In case of the first passage, the infected cell pellets were resuspended to 250µl with fresh medium, to extract RNA for the high-throughput sequencing. The cultured cell supernatant of the virus-infected A549, CaCO2, and HRT18 cells was centrifuged at 3,000g for 10min to use for the next passage, and stored at -80℃. The serial passage of SARS-CoV-2 on A549, CaCO2, and HRT18 cell lines were continued to passage 12 and the cultured cell supernatant of the infected cells in passage 12 was centrifuged at 3,000g for 10 min, and used to extract RNA for the high-throughput sequencing. The RNA samples were sequenced with illumine TruSeq Strand Total RNA LT kit and illumine NovaSeq6000 plaform form Macrogen, Inc (Seoul, Korea) for high throughput sequencing. The raw reads were trimmed with BBDuk and mapped the isolate SARS-CoV-2/human/KOR/KCDC03-NCCP43326/2020 (Genebank accession number. MW466791) with Bowtie 2 using Geneious program 2021.2.2 Result: Using SNP analysis workflow, our result showed the sequence variations pattern of SARS-CoV2 depending on host cell (A549, CaCO2, and HRT18 cell lines) and it was confirmed that a relatively large number of SNPs were commonly observed in spike protein. Some SNPs affect amino acid changes, and a common pattern of amino acid changes was observed the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV2 passaged in A549, CaCO2 and HRT18 cells. Conclusion: In this study, we tried to monitor the SARS-CoV-2 (GenBank accession No. MW466791 in 2020, Korea) evolution pattern in different host cells using high throughput sequencing analysis, and compare the selected mutations by each host cells with natural mutations found in currently circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants.
Project description:We introduced single-chain trimer (SCT) technologies into a high throughput platform for pMHC library generation that can be used for screening antigen specific CD8+ T cells. We compared the diversity of T cell receptor repertoire captured by SCT and folded peptide-MHC multimer presenting HLA-A02:01 restricted CMV peptide. We then constructed SCT libraries designed to capture SARS-CoV-2 spike specific CD8+ T cells from COVID-19 participants and healthy donors. TCR sequencing with antigen specificity was analyzed. The immunogenicity of these epitopes was validated by functional assays of T cells with cloned TCRs captured using SCT libraries.
Project description:Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients are generally at an increased risk for viral diseases. Viral infections of tissue affected by chronic IBD are insufficiently understood, especially in the context of flare-ups; while some studies have confidently shown aggravation of symptoms in large cohorts, others found no association. Although not considered at an increased risk of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), IBD patients suffer more frequent gastrointestinal symptoms during COVID-19 and a worse outcome has been associated with certain IBD medications and disease activity. For this reason, we generated intestinal epithelial organoids from ileum with Crohn’s disease (CD) and colon with ulcerative colitis (UC) together with healthy controls. Each group included five to six patients. Using RNA sequencing we showed that IBD organoids were not more susceptible to infection. The highest viral load two days after infection was in healthy ileum and is correlated to the expression of SARS-CoV-2 entry receptor ACE2 and proteases CTSL/B. Pathway analyses determined an apparently weaker defense reaction in CD organoids to SARS-CoV-2 which could simply be due to the lower viral load compared to the healthy group. In contrast to CD, there was an activation of viral defense in infected UC colon, especially interferon signaling, resembling highly infected healthy ileum. This was not seen in healthy colon and was unexpected since UC and healthy colon did not differ in viral load. In uninfected IBD organoids compared to healthy, there was an already stronger basal expression of genes implicated in viral defense, for example, of viral sensors OAS1 and OASL in CD and interferon regulatory transcription factor IRF7 in UC. Some were further influenced by SARS-CoV-2 infection with notable differences between CD and UC. To conclude, infection with SARS-CoV-2 did not lead to higher viral numbers in IBD organoids providing reassurance for patients in remission. Still, we observed a more pronounced epithelial defense reaction to the virus in UC colon, prompting further investigations on whether this could be the reason for stronger gastrointestinal symptoms of COVID-19 seen in IBD patients or if it could lead to a consequent IBD flare.