Ethics approval and consent to participate – as pointed out in the manuscript text in multiple places, no live humans were used in these studies, only high quality short post-mortem interval (PMI) tissues; please see the ‘Acknowledgements’ and ‘Ethical Considerations’ section (below) for further details;
Consent to publish – The journal ‘BMC Infectious disease’ have our explicit permission to publish this article after impartial peer-review;
Availability of Data and Materials: All data regarding ‘Methodology’ is available in the ‘Materials and Methods’ Section of the current manuscript. All relevant experimental data in this study are presented in 2 Figures and 2 Supplementary data files appended to this research communication. Any relevant queries on data, materials and methodology should be requested in writing and consultation with the corresponding author. We thank you for your interest in advance and would be happy to provide any ancillary information that you may need.
Conflict of Interest and Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest of any kind with any of the material presented in this research report. The authors declare that they have no competing interests associated with any data in this report.
Funding - Research on high quality short PMI human brain, eye and brain and host cell transcriptomics in the Lukiw laboratory involving total human RNA transcription and gene expression, the innate-immune response in AD and in other forms of neurological or retinal disease, amyloidogenesis and neuro-inflammation was supported through an unrestricted grant to the LSU Eye Center from Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB); the Louisiana Biotechnology Research Network (LBRN) and NIH grants NEI EY006311, NIA AG18031 and NIA AG038834 (WJL).
Authors' contributions
JH and WL conceptualized and planned the experiments; JH, WL, CC and LA performed the experiments; all authors participated in interactive discussions, data collection and statistical analysis; JH and WL wrote the manuscript; all authors have read and approved all of the research work performed in this manuscript.
Acknowledgements
Sincere thanks are extended to Drs. Jian-Guo Cui, Christopher Eicken, Elizabeth Head, Christopher Hebel, Wayne Poon and Piotr N. Alexandrov for short PMI human brain, eye and/or retinal tissues or extracts, ACE2 DNA and cDNA probes, recombinant ACE2 protein control standards, miRNA array work and initial data interpretation, and to Aileen I. Pogue and Darlene Guillot for expert technical assistance and medical artwork. Dr. James M Hill (deceased) had a life-long interest in virology, viral transmission and in ACE2 expression in the aging CNS and in neurological disease and the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This communication is dedicated to Dr JM Hill’s many years of scientific work in this fascinating research area. Thanks are further extended to the many neuropathologists, physicians and researchers of Canada and the USA who have provided high quality, short post-mortem interval (PMI) human CNS, eye and retinal tissues or extracted total brain and eye RNA for scientific study and quantitative analysis.
Ethical Considerations
The acquisition, handling, experimental, and analytical procedures involving short post-mortem interval (PMI) human eye and brain tissues were carried out in strict accordance with the ethics review board policies at eye, brain and tissue donor institutions and at the Louisiana State University (LSU) Health Sciences Center. Informed consent from next of kin was obtained at eye and brain tissue donor institutions for all tissue samples prior to autopsy and donation; coded shortpost-mortem interval (PMI)tissue samples (containing no personal identifying information of the donors) were obtained from eye and brain tissue banks used in these studies (see below). The ethical use of short PMI human eye and braintissues and their analyses were performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and carried out in strict accordance with the Institutional Biosafety Committee and the Institutional Review Board Committee (IBC/IRBC) ethical guidelines IBC#18059 and IRBC#6774 at the LSU Health Sciences Center, New Orleans LA 70112 USA. Thanks are extended to the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) at the UC Irvine Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders (UCI MIND); a designated Center of Excellence funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Bethesda MD USA for high quality short post-mortem human brain tissues. Eye and brain tissues and/or total RNA extracts were also obtained from the University of Toronto, Canada, from the Oregon Health and Sciences University Brain Bank, Portland OR, USA and from eye and brain tissue archives located at the LSU Neuroscience Center, New Orleans LA, USA.Project identification codes: National Institutes of Health grants NEI EY006311; NIA AG18031; NIA AG038834.