Fig. 4: Intracellular distribution of ACE2 and CFTR in polarized bronchial epithelial cells. | Nature Communications

Fig. 4: Intracellular distribution of ACE2 and CFTR in polarized bronchial epithelial cells.

From: SARS-CoV-2 viral entry and replication is impaired in Cystic Fibrosis airways due to ACE2 downregulation

Fig. 4

a Representative images of immunofluorescence detection of CFTR (green), ACE2 receptor (red) under basal conditions in polarized CFBE41o- (null), CFBE41o- expressing wild-type CFTR (WT), 16HBE14o- cells and in gene-edited 16HBE14o- cells carrying biallelic G542X-CFTR mutations (G542X) or W1282X-CFTR (W1282X), respectively. Images were acquired with confocal laser scanner Olympus FV3000 microscope (scale bar: 10 µm). Hoechst stain was used to fluorescently label the cell nuclei (blue). b The scatter plot with bars represents the quantification of the subcellular distribution of the ACE2 receptor (black) and CFTR (gray) in the different cell models, expressed as ratio between plasma membrane fluorescence and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) fluorescence. Data are mean ± SEM of 31 cells examined over 6 independent experiments (n = 31). Normal distribution was tested by the Shapiro–Wilk test before running the two-tailed Student’s t test for paired data (b), which has been reported within the scatter plot with bars (**p < 0.01). Source data are provided as a Source Data File.

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