Intestine Infection

The global COVID-19 pandemic has sent millions of lives spinning. Our lack of knowledge about this particular virus is its greatest threat, so scientists have been hard at work investigating its biology. One of the many unanswered questions was whether the virus could proliferate in the intestine, as well as in the respiratory organs. Now researchers have successfully grown the virus in tiny lab-grown versions of the intestine called organoids (pictured, green and blue, with the coronavirus highlighted in white), showing it is capable of settling in and multiplying. This may explain why the virus can often be detected in stool samples, and why around a third of patients experience symptoms like diarrhoea. The researchers were able to watch the virus multiply, and observe the cells’ response, revealing key details about how the virus survives, and providing a platform for studying the disease to reveal its secrets and develop new treatments.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image by Joep Beumer, Hubrecht Institute
• Oncode Institute, Hubrecht Institute, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and University Medical Center, Utrecht, and Viroscience Department, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Image copyright held by Hubrecht Institute
• Research published in Science, May 2020