Single-cell RNA-Seq reveals intracellular microbial diversity within immune cells during SARS-CoV-2 infection and recovery

• DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.108357
• Publication Date: 2023-10-30T19:12:56Z
• Authors: Sunita Yadav; Priyanka Mehta; Jyoti Soni; Partha Chattopadhyay; Priti Devi; Thierry Habyarimana; Kishore Tardalkar; Meghnad Joshi; Rajesh Pandey
• Keywords: Single-Cell Analysis; Intracellular parasite

Intracellular microorganisms, like viruses, bacteria, and fungi, pose challenges in detection due to their non-culturable forms. Transcriptomic analysis at cellular level enables exploration of distributions the impact these microorganisms on host cells, a domain that remains underexplored because methodological limitations. Single-cell technology shows promise addressing this by capturing polyadenine-tailed transcripts, recent studies confirmed polyadenylation microbial transcriptomes. We utilized single-cell RNA-seq from PBMCs probe intracellular microbes healthy, SARS-CoV-2-positive, recovered individuals. Among 76 bacterial species detected, 16 showed significant abundance differences.