Neurons represent a target of SARS-CoV-2 infection in brains of K18-hACE2 mice (Rothan et al., 2022; Seehusen et al., 2022; Morgan et al., 2023), non-human primates (Beckman et al., 2022), and hamsters (De Melo et al., 2023), with infection of neurons also observed in COVID-19 patients (Song et al., 2021; Shen et al., 2022; Emmi et al., 2023). The gene discussed is KRT18; the disease is COVID-19.