Project description:This dataset looks at the transcriptome of in vitro-differentiated primary lung cells infected with SARS-CoV2. Some cells have been treated with the drug Enzalutamide.
Project description:RNA-Seq was carried out in order to obtain the time dependent expression dynamics of SARS-CoV2 (Trondheim strain)-induced transcriptome changes in human lung epithelial Calu-3 cells.
Project description:Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes coronavirus diseases 2019 (COVID-19) and broncho-alveolar inflammation (Merad and Martin, 2020). IL-9 induces airway inflammation and bronchial hyper responsiveness in respiratory viral illnesses and allergic inflammation (Temann et al., 1998). However, the role of IL-9 is not yet identified in SARS-CoV2 infection. Here we show that IL-9 promotes SARS-CoV2 infection and airway inflammation in K18-hACE2 transgenic (ACE2.Tg) mice, as IL-9 blockade reduces SARS-CoV2 infection and suppressed airway inflammation. Foxo1 is essential for the induction of IL-9 in helper T (Th) cells (Malik et al., 2017). While ACE2.Tg mice with Foxo1-deficiency in CD4+ T cells were performed to be resistant to SARS-CoV2 infection associated with reduced IL-9 production, exogenous IL-9 made Foxo1-deficient mice susceptible to SARS-CoV2 infection with increased airway inflammation. Collectively, we identify a mechanistic insight of IL-9-mediated regulation of antiviral and inflammatory pathways in SARS-CoV2 infection, and unravel a principle for the development of host-directed therapeutics to mitigate disease severity.
Project description:RNAseq analysis of human immune cells (monocytes CD14+ and B cells CD19+) cocultured with SARS-CoV2, influenza A or Ebola viruses-infected epithelial cells as well as directly infected or SARS-CoV2 single protein transfected epithelial cells
Project description:Pathogenic mechanisms underlying severe SARS-CoV2 infection remain largely unelucidated. High-throughput sequencing technologies that capture genome and transcriptome information are key approaches to gain detailed mechanistic insights from infected cells. These techniques readily detect both pathogen and host-derived sequences, providing a means of studying host-pathogen interactions. Recent studies have reported the presence of host-virus chimeric (HVC) RNA in RNA-seq data from SARS-CoV2 infected cells and interpreted these findings as evidence of viral integration in the human genome as a pathogenic mechanism. Since SARS-CoV2 is a positive sense RNA virus that replicates in the cytoplasm it does not have a nuclear phase in its life cycle, so it is biologically unlikely to be in a location where splicing events could result in genome integration. Here, we investigated the biological authenticity of HVC events. In contrast to true biological events, e.g. mRNA splicing and genome rearrangement events, which generate reproducible chimeric sequencing fragments across different biological isolates, we found that HVC events across >100 RNA-seq libraries from patients with COVID-19 and SARS-CoV2 infected cell lines, were highly irreproducible. RNA-seq library preparation is inherently error-prone due to random template switching during reverse transcription of RNA to cDNA. By counting chimeric events observed when constructing an RNA-seq library from human RNA and spike-in RNA from an unrelated species, such as fruit-fly, we estimated that ~1% of RNA-seq reads are artifactually chimeric. In SARS-CoV2 RNA-seq we found that the frequency of HVC events were, in fact, no more frequent than this background “noise”. Finally, we developed a novel experimental approach to enrich SARS-CoV2 sequences from bulk RNA of infected cells. This method enriched viral sequences but did not enrich for HVC events, suggesting that the majority of HVC events are, in all likelihood, artifacts of library construction. In conclusion, our findings indicate that HVC events observed in RNA-sequencing libraries from SARS-CoV2 infected cells are extremely rare and are likely artifacts arising from either random template switching of reverse-transcriptase and/or sequence alignment errors. Therefore, the observed HVC events do not support SARS-CoV2 fusion to cellular genes and/or integration into human genomes.
Project description:Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), continues to be a pressing health concern. In this study, we investigated the impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection on host microRNA (miRNA) populations in three human lung-derived cell lines, as well as in nasopharyngeal swabs from SARS-CoV-2–infected individuals. We did not detect any major and consistent differences in host miRNA levels after SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, we unexpectedly discovered a viral miRNA-like small RNA, named CoV2-miR-O7a (for SARS-CoV-2 miRNA-like ORF7a-derived small RNA). Its abundance ranges from low to moderate as compared to host miRNAs and it associates with Argonaute proteins—core components of the RNA interference pathway. We identify putative targets for CoV2-miR-O7a, including Basic Leucine Zipper ATF-Like Transcription Factor 2 (BATF2), which participates in interferon signaling. We demonstrate that CoV2-miR-O7a production relies on cellular machinery, yet is independent of Drosha protein, and is enhanced by the presence of a strong and evolutionarily conserved hairpin formed within the ORF7a sequence.
Project description:SARS-CoV-2 can generate viral microRNAs (v-miRNAs) that target host gene expression. This study used small RNAseq to identify the v-miRNAs present in COVID-19 patients' nasopharyngeal swabs. The study identified a specific conserved v-miRNA sequence (CoV2-miR-O8) unique to SARS-CoV-2 that is highly present in COVID-19 patients' samples, interacts with Argonaute, and has features consistent with Dicer and Drosha generation. CoV2-miR-O8 is predicted to target specific human genes and can be detected by RTPCR assays in patients.