Figure 3.
SARS-CoV-2 infection promotes alveolar epithelial hyperplasia
(A and B) Histological analysis of the alveolar epithelium stained (A) by H&E (scale bars, 200 μm) or (B) by immunofluorescence for EpCAM (yellow).
(C and D) Differential gene-expression analysis (C) and GSEA using reactome (R) and hallmark (H) datasets (D) for upregulated or downregulated genes in SARS-CoV-2-infected patients compared to H1N1.
(E) Histological analysis of alveolar epithelium (scale bars, 200 μm for H&E) in SARS-CoV-2 patients shows cellular hyperplasia in H&E with EpCAM+ immunofluorescent staining (yellow).
(F) Differential gene-expression analysis of normal and hyperplastic alveolar epithelium in SARS-CoV-2-infected patients.
(G) Heatmap representation of genes involved in alveolar epithelium proliferation (GO:0060502) and their relative expression in all SARS-CoV-2 normal alveolar epithelium, hyperplastic alveolar epithelium, and H1N1 normal alveolar epithelium (asterisk indicates significant genes between H1N1 and SARS-CoV-2 shown in the volcano plot). Differential gene expression was defined as p = 0.02 and log2 fold change of 0.5. SARS-CoV-2-infected patients (n = 3), H1N1 (n = 3), and SARS-CoV-2/H1N1 (n = 1).