Figure 3.

ScRNA-seq identifies enterocytes, hepatocytes, and leukocytes as host cells for HuNoV infection in the zebrafish intestines. (a) Cell clusters susceptible to HuNoV infection are highlighted and included leukocytes marked with a black box. (b) The relative expression levels of HuNoV’s ORF 1, 2, and 3 (respectively encoding for the non-structural polyprotein, VP1, and VP2) in different cell clusters are shown in detail and highlight a tropism particular for leukocytes. The average expression of each norovirus read per cell type was determined followed by a normalization across all cell types. (c) Within leukocytes, a 2D t-SNE projection of the leukocyte cell cluster shows the relative expression of HuNoV. Within leukocytes, the expression of marco, i.e., a marker for macrophages and mpx, i.e., a marker for neutrophils is shown in both uninfected and HuNoV-infected conditions. The expression of HuNoV and the macrophage marker marco show an overlap corresponding to a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.51. In contrast, no overlap is seen between the expression of mpx, a marker for neutrophils corresponding to a low Pearson correlation coefficient of − 0.17. HuNoV = human norovirus, ORF = open reading frame, VP1 = viral protein 1, major capsid protein, VP2 = viral protein 2, minor capsid protein, dsRNA = double-stranded RNA.