[Bioinformatics analysis on molecular mechanism of ribavirin and interferon-α in treating MERS-CoV].

OBJECTIVE

To study the molecular mechanism of ribavirin and interferon-α in the treatment of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) by bio-informatic methods.

METHODS

MERS-CoV-related microarray data was searched from Array Express database and analyzed by Agilent GeneSpring GX software. Target genes of ribavirin and interferon-α were acquired from Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD). PANTHER TOOL and DAVID platform were used for the analysis of GO and Pathway.

RESULTS

One set of MERS-CoV related microarray data and 27 target genes of ribavirin and interferon-α were acquired from the online databases. Data on Genes from microarray were divided into two time-related gene clusters by using the Unsupervised Hierarchical Clustering. Data from the GO analysis indicated that the target genes of ribavirin and interferon-α as well as the genes from the microarray were mainly enriched in 10 biological processes, including cellular process, metabolic process, immune system process and biological regulation, et al. Data on drug target genes, first and second cluster of microarray would involve 9, 3 and 23 signaling pathways respectively, and only the former two showed 7 common pathways, which were related to pathogen recognition, cytokine release and autoimmune response.

CONCLUSION

Ribavirin in combination with interferon-α might have therapeutic effects on MERS patients through several signaling pathways. Genes in the second cluster might serve as target genes to be used for screening of new drugs in treating the MERS-CoV infection.