Figure 1. SARS-CoV-2 infection induces PTGS2 expression in human and mouse systems.

(A) Calu-3 cells were infected with SARS-CoV-2 at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 0.05. PTGS2 expression was measured at 2 days post infection (dpi), normalized to ACTB. (B-C) PTGS2 expression in Calu-3 (B) and ACE2-overexpressing A549 (A549-ACE2) (C) cells following SARS-CoV-2 infection. Data are from GSE147507 (Blanco-Melo et al., 2020). (D) Huh7.5 cells were infected with SARS-CoV-2 at a MOI of 0.05. PTGS2 expression was measured at 2 dpi, normalized to ACTB. (E) Human bronchial epithelial cells (HBECs) were cultured at an air-liquid interface and then infected at the apical surface with 10⁴ plaque-forming units (PFU) of SARS-CoV-2. Cells were collected at 1, 2, and 3 dpi for single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) (16). Volcano plot of differentially expressed genes in infected versus bystander ciliated cells pooled from all time points. PTGS2 is highlighted. (F) K18-hACE2 mice were infected intranasally with 1.2 × 10⁶ PFU of SARS-CoV-2. Ptgs2 expression in the lung was measured at 0, 2, 4, and 7 dpi. (G) Ptgs2 expression in the lung of K18-hACE2 mice following intranasal SARS-CoV-2 infection. Data are from GSE154104 (Winkler et al., 2020). All data points in this figure are presented as mean ± SEM. Data were analyzed by Welch’s two-tailed, unpaired t-test (A, D, F); Student’s two-tailed, unpaired t-test (B, C, G); and two-sided Mann-Whitney U test with continuity and Benjamini-Hochberg correction (E). *P < 0.05, ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001. Data in (A, D) are representative of two independent experiments with three replicates per condition.