Abstract
It has been reported that ACE2 is the main host cell receptor of 2019-nCoV and plays a crucial role in the entry of virus into the cell to cause the final infection. To investigate the potential route of 2019-nCov infection on the mucosa of oral cavity, bulk RNA-seq profiles from two public databases including The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Functional Annotation of The Mammalian Genome Cap Analysis of Gene Expression (FANTOM5 CAGE) dataset were collected. RNA-seq profiling data of 13 organ types with para-carcinoma normal tissues from TCGA and 14 organ types with normal tissues from FANTOM5 CAGE were analyzed in order to explore and validate the expression of ACE2 on the mucosa of oral cavity. Further, single-cell transcriptomes from an independent data generated in-house were used to identify and confirm the ACE2-expressing cell composition and proportion in oral cavity. The results demonstrated that the ACE2 expressed on the mucosa of oral cavity. Interestingly, this receptor was highly enriched in epithelial cells of tongue. Preliminarily, those findings have explained the basic mechanism that the oral cavity is a potentially high risk for 2019-nCoV infectious susceptibility and provided a piece of evidence for the future prevention strategy in dental clinical practice as well as daily life.
Highlights
Since December 2019, an increasing number of patients with pneumonia occurred in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, which attracted much attention within China but across the world[1,2]
The study of Xu et al.[9] found that the receptor-binding domain (RBD) domain of the 2019-nCoV S-protein supports strong interaction with human ACE2 molecules. These findings suggest that the ACE2 plays an important role in cellular entry, ACE2-expressing cells may act as target cells and are susceptible to 2019-nCoV infection[10]
In order to investigated the potential routes of 2019-nCov infection on the mucosa of oral cavity, we explored whether the
Summary
Since December 2019, an increasing number of patients with pneumonia occurred in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, which attracted much attention within China but across the world[1,2]. High ACE2 expression was identified in type II alveolar cells (AT2) of lung[10,11,12], esophagus upper and stratified epithelial cells, absorptive enterocytes from ileum and colon[12], cholangiocytes[13], myocardial cells, kidney proximal tubule cells, and bladder urothelial cells[10] These findings indicated that those organs with high ACE2-expressing cells should be considered as potential high risk for 2019-nCoV infection[10]. Among different oral sites, ACE2 expression was higher in tongue than buccal and gingival tissues These findings indicate that the mucosa of oral cavity may be a potentially high risk route of 2019-nCov infection. The above results indicated that the ACE2 could be expressed on the epithelial cells of the oral mucosa and highly enriched in tongue epithelial cells
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