gms | German Medical Science

A novel coronavirus with a size of app. 30000 bp has recently been identified as the causative agent of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a new human disease resulting globally in about 8400 cases and 800 deaths. The functional receptor for SARS cororonavirus could recently be identified as the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). The reservoir of SARS-coronavirus has not yet been clarified precisely. Researchers could isolate the virus out of palm civet cats and raccoon dogs. But nevertheless these species are not necessarily the natural hosts.

In our study we investigated if SARS coronavirus could infect and replicate in permanent cell lines and primary cells of different species in order to i) define and characterize potential target cells of SARS coronavirus, ii) to understand the mechanism of virus transmission and the nature and range of target cells. Therefore primary and permanent cell-lines from different organs were taken from pigs, chicken, cat, cattle, rat and human and infected with SARS-coronavirus Hongkong. Infection in cells was identified 0, 7, 31, 55 and 78 h after infection using the indirect immunefluorescenceassay and a newly established TaqMan pcr with primers detecting a region in the Surface Spike Glykoprotein. In parallel, at these points of time supernatant was investigated for increase of viral RNA using the TaqMan PCR. Infection could be observed in the human cell line Huh-7 and in two pig cells (POEK, PS).

Furthermore all human cell lines used in this experiment were investigated for the Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2. The results will be presented and discussed in detail.