SARS-CoV-2 infection of airway organoids reveals conserved use of Tetraspanin-8 by Ancestral, Delta, and Omicron variants.

Ancestral SARS coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and variants of concern (VOC) caused a global pandemic with a spectrum of disease severity. The mechanistic explaining variations related to airway epithelium are relatively understudied. Here, we biobanked airway organoids (AO) by preserving stem cell function. We optimized viral infection with H1N1/PR8 and comprehensively characterized epithelial responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection in phenotypically stable AO from 20 different subjects. We discovered Tetraspanin-8 (TSPAN8) as a facilitator of SARS-CoV-2 infection. TSPAN8 facilitates SARS-CoV-2 infection rates independently of ACE2-Spike interaction. In head-to-head comparisons with Ancestral SARS-CoV-2, Delta and Omicron VOC displayed lower overall infection rates of AO but triggered changes in epithelial response. All variants shared highest tropism for ciliated and goblet cells. TSPAN8-blocking antibodies diminish SARS-CoV-2 infection and may spur novel avenues for COVID-19 therapy.

Single cell proteomics characterization of bone marrow hematopoiesis with distinct Ras pathway lesions.

Normal hematopoiesis requires constant prolific production of different blood cell lineages by multipotent hematopoietic stem cells (HSC). Stem- and progenitor- cells need to balance dormancy with proliferation. How genetic alterations impact frequency, lineage potential, and metabolism of HSC is largely unknown. Here, we compared induced expression of KRAS G12D or RasGRP1 to normal hematopoiesis. At low-resolution, both Ras pathway lesions result in skewing towards myeloid lineages. Single-cell resolution CyTOF proteomics unmasked an expansion of HSC- and progenitor- compartments for RasGRP1, contrasted by a depletion for KRAS G12D . SCENITH™ quantitates protein synthesis with single-cell precision and corroborated that immature cells display low metabolic SCENITH™ rates. Both RasGRP1 and KRAS G12D elevated mean SCENITH™ signals in immature cells. However, RasGRP1-overexpressing stem cells retain a metabolically quiescent cell-fraction, whereas this fraction diminishes for KRAS G12D . Our temporal single cell proteomics and metabolomics datasets provide a resource of mechanistic insights into altered hematopoiesis at single cell resolution.