Roach SN, Shepherd FK, Mickelson CK, Fiege JK, Thi. Tropism for ciliated cells is the dominant driver of influenza viral burst size in the human airway. PNAS 2024 Jul 30;121(31):e2320303121
Influenza viruses pose a significant burden on global human health. Influenza has a broad cellular tropism in the airway, but how infection of different epithelial cell types impacts replication kinetics and burden in the airways is not fully understood. Using primary human airway cultures, which recapitulate the diverse epithelial cell landscape of the human airways, we investigated the impact of cell type composition on virus tropism and replication kinetics. Cultures were highly diverse across multiple donors and 30 independent differentiation conditions and supported a range of influenza replication. Although many cell types were susceptible to influenza, ciliated and secretory cells were predominantly infected. Despite the strong tropism preference for secretory and ciliated cells, which consistently make up 75% or more of infected cells, only ciliated cells were associated with increased virus production. Surprisingly, infected secretory cells were associated with overall reduced virus output. The disparate response and contribution to influenza virus production could be due to different pro- and antiviral interferon-stimulated gene signatures between ciliated and secretory populations, which were interrogated with single-cell RNA sequencing. These data highlight the heterogeneous outcomes of influenza virus infections in the complex cellular environment of the human airway and the disparate impacts of infected cell identity on multiround burst size, even among preferentially infected cell types.
See Also:
Latest articles in those days:
- Mechanism of co-transcriptional cap snatching by influenza polymerase 17 hours ago
- Understanding spatiotemporal clustering of seasonal influenza in the United States 18 hours ago
- [preprint]Pathogenesis of H5N1 Clade 2.3.4.4b in dry Jersey cows following intramammary inoculation shows within-host compartmentalization 18 hours ago
- [preprint]Optimizing an avian influenza vaccine using a novel Bacterial Enzymatic Combinatorial Chemistry (BECC) TLR4 adjuvant 18 hours ago
- Lack of Respiratory Droplet Transmission of Two Recent Human Influenza A(H5N1) Viruses in Female Ferrets 3 days ago
[Go Top] [Close Window]


