Our COVID splicing study is featured on the cover of Cell Reports Methods.

See the cover art here, and Press Release here.

In this issue, Zhang et al. present an approach for COVID-19 diagnosis and immune response profiling based on alternative splicing. The cover image depicts the generation of two different mRNA and protein isoforms from a single gene through the process of RNA alternative splicing. Under normal conditions (left side), the yellow cassette exon is present in the mRNA of human blood cells. However, during SARS-CoV-2 infection (right side), as represented by the viral particles, the cassette exon is excluded from the mRNA in association with the host’s immune response. By leveraging the inclusion ratio of the target cassette exon in blood, the authors build a host-response assay for COVID-19 infection. The assay achieves near-perfect diagnostic accuracy, as indicated by the linear separation in this image.

Cover art

Credit: Kouzou Sakai for Simons Foundation.