Bhattacharyya Pallabi, Biswas Subhas C
Cell Biology & Physiology Division, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, India.
Front Microbiol. 2020 Sep 18;11:571553. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.571553. eCollection 2020.
SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) is a novel coronavirus responsible for the current COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic, which has hit the world since December 2019. It has spread to about 216 countries worldwide, affecting more than 21.7 million people so far. Although clinical trials of a number of promising antiviral drugs and vaccines against COVID-19 are underway, it is hard to predict how successful these drug- or vaccine-based therapeutics are eventually going to be in combating COVID-19 because most of such therapeutic strategies have failed against human coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) responsible for similar pandemics in the past. In that context, we would like to bring to scientific attention another group of endogenous regulatory molecules, the small non-coding RNAs, especially the microRNAs, which are found to regulate critical cellular pathways in a number of disease conditions, including RNA viral infections. This review will focus on understanding the effect of altered microRNA expression during coronavirus-mediated infections and how it may provide clues for further exploring the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2, with a view of developing RNAi-based therapeutics and biomarkers against COVID-19.
严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2(SARS-CoV-2)是一种新型冠状病毒,引发了自2019年12月以来席卷全球的2019冠状病毒病(COVID-19)大流行。它已传播到全球约216个国家,迄今感染人数超过2170万。尽管针对COVID-19的一些有前景的抗病毒药物和疫苗的临床试验正在进行,但很难预测这些基于药物或疫苗的治疗方法最终在对抗COVID-19方面会取得多大成功,因为过去大多数此类治疗策略在对抗诸如导致类似大流行的严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒(SARS-CoV)和中东呼吸综合征冠状病毒(MERS-CoV)等人类冠状病毒时均告失败。在此背景下,我们希望引起科学界对另一组内源性调节分子——小非编码RNA,尤其是微小RNA的关注,它们在包括RNA病毒感染在内的多种疾病状态下调节关键细胞通路。本综述将着重于了解冠状病毒介导的感染过程中微小RNA表达改变的影响,以及这如何为进一步探索SARS-CoV-2的发病机制提供线索,以期开发出针对COVID-19的基于RNA干扰的治疗方法和生物标志物。