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Caption
A lone infected sustentacular cell is surrounded by non-infected cells in the olfactory mucosa of a COVID-19 patient who died four days after diagnosis of the infection. The infected cell has the characteristic shape of a wine glass. The blue color comes from staining with an antibody against the nucleocapsid protein of the virus. The red dots represent staining with an RNAscope probe for a gene that is expressed in sustentacular cells (GPX3). Within the lone infected cell, there are few or no red dots, because infection of a cell with SARS-CoV-2 causes decay of host RNA molecules. The green dots represent staining with an an RNAscope probe for a type of viral RNA molecules that are only present during ongoing viral replication. This lone sustentacular cell was thus serving as a “factory” for replicating viral RNA at the time the postmortem tissue sample was taken.
Credit
MaxPlanck Research Unit f. Neurogenetics/ Mona Khan
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