Low compositions of human toll-like receptor 7/8-stimulating RNA motifs in the MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 genomes imply a substantial ability to evade human innate immunity

作者：Chu-Wen Yang, Mei-Fang Chen

PeerJ (SCI)

卷期數：9

文獻號碼：e11008

出版日期：Feb 2021

Background

The innate immune system especially Toll-like receptor (TLR) 7/8 and the interferon pathway, constitutes an important first line of defense against single-stranded RNA viruses. However, large-scale, systematic comparisons of the TLR 7/8-stimulating potential of genomic RNAs of single-stranded RNA viruses are rare. In this study, a computational method to evaluate the human TLR 7/8-stimulating ability of single-stranded RNA virus genomes based on their human TLR 7/8-stimulating trimer compositions was used to analyze 1,002 human coronavirus genomes.

Results

The human TLR 7/8-stimulating potential of coronavirus genomic (positive strand) RNAs followed the order of NL63-CoV > HKU1-CoV >229E-CoV ≅OC63-CoV > SARS-CoV-2 > MERS-CoV > SARS-CoV. These results suggest that among these coronaviruses, MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 may have a higher ability to evade the human TLR 7/8-mediated innate immune response. Analysis with a logistic regression equation derived from human coronavirus data revealed that most of the 1,762 coronavirus genomic (positive strand) RNAs isolated from bats, camels, cats, civets, dogs and birds exhibited weak human TLR 7/8-stimulating potential equivalent to that of the MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 genomic RNAs.

Conclusions

Prediction of the human TLR 7/8-stimulating potential of viral genomic RNAs may be useful for surveillance of emerging coronaviruses from nonhuman mammalian hosts.

本論文比較新冠肺炎病毒與普通冠狀病毒基因體核甘酸組成的差異，探討不同病毒對躲避宿主先天免疫系統能力不同。本文是東吳第三篇新冠病毒的研究論文。

文章網頁連結: https://peerj.com/articles/11008/

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