{"doi":"10.3791/63127","title":"Live Imaging and Quantification of Viral Infection in K18 hACE2 Transgenic Mice Using Reporter-Expressing Recombinant SARS-CoV-2","abstract":"The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). To date, SARS-CoV-2 has been responsible for over 242 million infections and more than 4.9 million deaths worldwide. Similar to other viruses, studying SARS-CoV-2 requires the use of experimental methods to detect the presence of virus in infected cells and/or in animal models. To overcome this limitation, we generated replication-competent recombinant (r)SARS-CoV-2 that expresses bioluminescent (nanoluciferase, Nluc) or fluorescent (Venus) proteins. These reporter-expressing rSARS-CoV-2 allow tracking viral infections in vitro and in vivo based on the expression of Nluc and Venus reporter genes. Here the study describes the use of rSARS-CoV-2/Nluc and rSARS-CoV-2/Venus to detect and track SARS-CoV-2 infection in the previously described K18 human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) transgenic mouse model of infection using in vivo imaging systems (IVIS). This rSARS-CoV-2/Nluc and rSARS-CoV-2/Venus show rSARS-CoV-2/WT-like pathogenicity and viral replication in vivo. Importantly, Nluc and Venus expression allow us to directly track viral infections in vivo and ex vivo, in infected mice. These rSARS-CoV-2/Nluc and rSARS-CoV-2/Venus represent an excellent option to study the biology of SARS-CoV-2 in vivo, to understand viral infection and associated COVID-19 disease, and to identify effective prophylactic and/or therapeutic treatments to combat SARS-CoV-2 infection.","journal":"Journal of Visualized Experiments","year":2021,"id":201830,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":7,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9531,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":277648,"name":"Kevin Chiem","orcid":"0000-0002-3892-5944","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":108117,"name":"Jesus A. Silvas","orcid":"0000-0002-1200-803X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":240057,"name":"Jun‐Gyu Park","orcid":"0000-0001-7163-3591","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":2361,"name":"Chengjin Ye","orcid":"0000-0002-1934-9494","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":2423,"name":"Luis Martínez‐Sobrido","orcid":"0000-0001-7084-0804","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":399632,"name":"Desarey Morales Vasquez","orcid":"0000-0002-7357-9821","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":39,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:51:05.955461Z","pmid":"34806704","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}