The Nucleocapsid Protein of SARS-CoV-2 Abolished Pluripotency in Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is raging across the world, leading to a mortality rate of 3.4%. As a potential vaccine and therapeutic target, the nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2 (nCoVN) functions in packaging the viral genome and viral self-assembly. To investigate the biological effect of nCoVN to human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), genetically engineered iPSC overexpressing nCoVN (iPSC-nCoVN) were generated by lentiviral expression systems. Unexpectedly, the morphology and proliferation rate of iPSC were changed after nCoVN expressing for two weeks. The pluripotency markers SSEA4 and TRA-1-81 were not detectable in iPSC-nCoVN. Meanwhile, iPSC-nCoVN lost the ability for differentiation into cardiomyocytes when using a routine differentiation protocol. Our data suggested that nCoVN disrupted the pluripotent properties in iPSC and turned them into fibroblasts, which provided a new insight to the pathogenic mechanism of SARS-CoV-2.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2, nucleocapsid protein, human induced pluripotent stem cell, pluripotency, fibroblast

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Lin, Zebin and Gao, Qiang and Qian, Fang and Jinlian, Mai and Lishi, Zhou and Yu, Qian and Tian, Cai and Zhenhua, Chen and Ping, Wang and Lin, Bin, The Nucleocapsid Protein of SARS-CoV-2 Abolished Pluripotency in Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (March 26, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3561932 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3561932