On May 11, 2020, HHMI announced that scientists had identified places the new coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, may invade the body. Their findings suggest that the virus may be able to enter more kinds of cells than previously thought. The work also offers hints about two central SARS-CoV-2 questions: How the virus can harm so many different organs and why some people are more vulnerable to infection.

Earlier this year, a group of scientists from across the Human Cell Atlas project realized they could look for these molecules on cells throughout the body — using data they had already collected from healthy people.

With information from more than 4 million human cells from people of many different ages, the scientists identified places the virus, called SARS-CoV-2, may invade the body. Their findings suggest that the virus may be able to enter more kinds of cells than previously thought. The work also offers hints about two central SARS-CoV-2 questions: How the virus can harm so many different organs and why some people are more vulnerable to infection. The team posted a preliminary analysis on bioRxiv on April 20, 2020.

A massive collaboration of nearly 200 scientists made this effort possible, says Aviv Regev, one of the collaborators and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “By rallying together and sharing data collected for other purposes, we could draw conclusions we could not have gotten any other way,” she says. “This happened because of SARS-CoV-2. And the Human Cell Atlas network helped us pivot quickly. Science normally doesn’t work like this.”

COVID-19 kills many patients by severely damaging their lungs, but it has become increasingly clear that the disease causes injury elsewhere, too, and that may also lead to death. Even patients with mild cases can experience loss of smell and taste, sometimes diarrhea, and rarely skin lesions. Meanwhile, patients with severe illness can experience heart and kidney failure, spontaneous blood clots, stroke, and even seizures. No one fully understands why, but the team’s findings could help.

The new study also offers hints about the immune response’s contribution to the disease. Doctors have noted that COVID-19 can send the immune system into overdrive, prompting harm to the body. In fact, cells with the viral entry molecules also expressed immune genes poised for action, the scientists found.

The study’s conclusions come with a major caveat, Regev points out. Because the analysis relied on cells from healthy people, those cells identified as potentially vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 are only predictions, she says. To find out what really happens during infection, Atlas scientists are now examining cells from COVID-19 patients.