Neutrophils, Crucial, or Harmful Immune Cells Involved in Coronavirus Infection: A Bioinformatics Study.

Nima Hemmat,Afshin Derakhshani,Nicola Silvestris,Behzad Baradaran,Hossein Bannazadeh Baghi,Simona De Summa

doi:10.3389/fgene.2020.00641

Abstract

The latest member of the Coronaviridae family, called SARS-CoV-2, causes the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). The disease has caused a pandemic and is threatening global health. Similar to SARS-CoV, this new virus can potentially infect lower respiratory tract cells and can go on to cause severe acute respiratory tract syndrome, followed by pneumonia and even death in many nations. The molecular mechanism of the disease has not yet been evaluated until now. We analyzed the GSE1739 microarray dataset including 10 SARS-positive PBMC and four normal PBMC. Co-expression network analysis by WGCNA suggested that highly preserved 833 turquoise module with genes were significantly related to SARS-CoV infection. ELANE, ORM2, RETN, BPI, ARG1, DEFA4, CXCL1, and CAMP were the most important genes involved in this disease according to GEO2R analysis as well. The GO analysis demonstrated that neutrophil activation and neutrophil degranulation are the most activated biological processes in the SARS infection as well as the neutrophilia, basophilia, and lymphopenia predicted by deconvolution analysis of samples. Thus, using Serpins and Arginase inhibitors during SARS-CoV infection may be beneficial for increasing the survival of SARS-positive patients. Regarding the high similarity of SARS-CoV-2 to SARS-CoV, the use of such inhibitors might be beneficial for COVID-19 patients.

Highlights

The Coronaviridae family, enveloped viruses with a positive-sense single-stranded RNA, can cause numerous diseases, such as respiratory disorders, in both humans and animals (Weiss and Leibowitz, 2011)
As SARS-CoV-2 threatens world health, it is essential to find the molecular mechanisms involved during this infection to find the proper treatment and prevention approaches
Given the similarity of SARS-CoV-2 to another member of the Coronaviridae family, SARS-CoV, we analyzed the expression profile of SARS-positive patients compared to normal samples to find the molecular mechanisms involved in this infection by using weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) and the other systems biology approaches

Summary

Introduction

The Coronaviridae family, enveloped viruses with a positive-sense single-stranded RNA, can cause numerous diseases, such as respiratory disorders, in both humans and animals (Weiss and Leibowitz, 2011). Similar to SARS-CoV, this new virus can infect lower respiratory tract cells and can go on to cause severe acute respiratory tract syndrome, followed by pneumonia and even death (Hui et al, 2020). The typical structure of CoV contains 4 structural proteins including spike (S), membrane (M), envelope (E), nucleocapsid (N), and, in some genera, Hemagglutinin esterase (HE) protein (Hussain et al, 2005). These proteins facilitate the life cycle of the virus from attachment to assembly and releasing from the host cell; several non-structural proteins are involved in preparing and recruiting cellular pathways to achieve a successful viral infection (Fehr and Perlman, 2015)

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