SARS-CoV-2 infects and replicates in photoreceptor and retinal ganglion cells of human retinal organoids.

Several studies have pointed to retinal involvement in COVID-19, yet many questions remain regarding the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to infect and replicate in retinal cells and its effects on the retina. Here, we have used human pluripotent stem cell-derived retinal organoids to study retinal infection by SARS-CoV-2. Indeed, SARS-CoV-2 can infect and replicate in retinal organoids, as it is shown to infect different retinal lineages, such as retinal ganglion cells and photoreceptors.

Heading towards a dead end: The role of DND1 in germ line differentiation of human iPSCs.

The DND microRNA-mediated repression inhibitor 1 (DND1) is a conserved RNA binding protein (RBP) that plays important roles in survival and fate maintenance of primordial germ cells (PGCs) and in the development of the male germline in zebrafish and mice. Dead end was shown to be expressed in human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), PGCs and spermatogonia, but little is known about its specific role concerning pluripotency and human germline development. Here we use CRISPR/Cas mediated knockout and PGC-like cell (PGCLC) differentiation in human iPSCs to determine if DND1 (1) plays a role in maintaining pluripotency and (2) in specification of PGCLCs.

Dual randomization of oligonucleotides to reduce the bias in ribosome-profiling libraries.

Protein translation is at the heart of cellular metabolism and its in-depth characterization is key for many lines of research. Recently, ribosome profiling became the state-of-the-art method to quantitatively characterize translation dynamics at a transcriptome-wide level. However, the strategy of library generation affects its outcomes.

Identification of Immunogenic Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte Epitopes Containing Drug Resistance Mutations in Antiretroviral Treatment-Naïve HIV-Infected Individuals.

Background: Therapeutic HIV vaccines may prove helpful to intensify antiretroviral treatment (ART) efficacy and may be an integral part of future cure strategies.

Methods: We examined IFN-gamma ELISpot responses to a panel of 218 HIV clade B consensus-based HIV protease-reverse transcriptase peptides, designed to mimic previously described and predicted cytotoxic T lymphocyte epitopes overlapping drug resistance (DR) positions, that either included the consensus sequence or the DR variant sequence, in 49 ART-naïve HIV-infected individuals. Next generation sequencing was used to assess the presence of minority DR variants in circulating viral populations.