Single-cell RNA sequencing of pandemic influenza A virus-infected human airway epithelial cells

To characterize the host response to pandemic IAV infection in its natural target cells, we infected primary human airway epithelial cell (hAEC) cultures wild-type pandemic IAV (WT) or a NS1 mutant virus (NS1R38A) with abrogated dsRNA binding capacity at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 0.03. We then profiled the transcriptomes of uninfected cells as well as cells harvested 18 hours post-infection (hpi) using single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq).