Relative Abundance of SARS-CoV-2 Entry Genes in the Enterocytes of the Lower Gastrointestinal Tract

Abstract

COVID-19, the disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has rapidly spread throughout the world and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, thus leading to a rapid surge in the efforts to understand the mechanisms of transmission, methods of prevention, and potential therapies. While COVID-19 frequently manifests as a respiratory infection,1 there is evidence for infection of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract1-4 with documented viral RNA shedding in the stool of infected patients.2,4 In this study, we aimed to investigate the expression of ACE2 and TMPRSS2, which are required for SARS-CoV-2 entry into mammalian cells,5 from single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) datasets of five different parts of the GI tract: esophagus, stomach, pancreas, small intestine, and colon/rectum.