Published in Cell Stem Cell
To study infection response to SARS-CoV-2, Youk et al. developed a 3D culture model of human alveolar stem cells in chemically defined conditions. They revealed that SARS-CoV-2 productively infects alveolar type 2 cells resulting in innate immune response. Full infection of individual cells was exhibited from a single viral entry.
Published in Cell Stem Cell
Tata and colleagues report defined conditions for long-term expansion and differentiation of adult human primary alveolar stem cells. Cultured AT2s are conducive to SARS-CoV-2 infection and elicit transcriptome-wide changes that mirror COVID-19 histopathology, including upregulation of inflammatory responses, cell death and down-regulation of surfa...
Published in Cell Stem Cell
Increasing reports show neurological symptoms in COVID19 patients, but it is still unclear whether SARS-CoV-2 can directly damage neurons. Lancaster and colleagues investigate viral neurotropism using brain organoids and discover that SARS-CoV-2 does not significantly infect neurons but productively infects choroid plexus, leading to damage of this...
Published in Cell Stem Cell
COVID-19 has unfortunately halted lab work, conferences, and in-person networking, which is especially detrimental to researchers just starting their labs. Through social media and our reviewer networks, we met some early-career stem cell investigators impacted by the closures. Here, they introduce themselves and their research to our readers.
Published in Cell Stem Cell
Zamboni et al. show that cortical astrocytes can generate interneurons following Notch signaling depletion and injury. Transcriptional analysis reveals early activation of a neural stem cell program that arises irrespective of injury condition. Neurogenesis by cortical astrocytes recapitulates canonical neurogenic programs and unfolds independent o...
Published in Cell Stem Cell
Among the common flaviviruses that infect humans, Zika virus, and the contemporary Asian strain in particular, is distinctively associated with microcephaly. Zeng et al. (2020) report in this issue of Cell Stem Cell that strong binding and inhibition of human Dicer enzyme by the capsid protein is a potential mechanism for this unique pathogenic pot...
Published in Cell Stem Cell
SARS-CoV-2 causes neurological symptoms in a significant portion of patients with COVID-19. Ming and colleagues tested SARS-CoV-2 neurotropism by using monolayer neural cells and brain organoids generated from human pluripotent stem cells and show minimal neuron and astrocyte infection but efficient choroid plexus infection, leading to cell death a...
Published in Cell Stem Cell
Huang et al. show that human iPSC-derived alveolar type 2 cells (iAT2s) can be used to model COVID-19. They find that iAT2s in air-liquid interface culture are permissive to SARS-CoV-2 infection and show that SARS-CoV-2 induces a rapid inflammatory phenotype predominated by NF-κB signaling.
Published in Cell Stem Cell
Choi et al. show that inflammatory signals play a crucial role during alveolar regeneration after injury. They define stepwise differentiation trajectories for AT2 cells into AT1 cells via damage-associated transient progenitors (DATPs) and find that unresolved inflammation stalls transition of DATPs into mature AT1 cells.
Published in Cell Stem Cell
Ortmann et al. show that ground-state pluripotent stem cells exhibit variability in gene expression and differentiation propensity that is associated with their genetic background. This variability is linked to differences in major signaling pathway activity, showing that analyses of expression quantitative trait loci enable identification of causa...
