Bovo Samuele, Schiavo Giuseppina, Fontanesi Luca
Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences, University of Bologna, Viale Giuseppe Fanin 46, 40127 Bologna, Italy.
Animals (Basel). 2022 Mar 26;12(7):838. doi: 10.3390/ani12070838.
Epidemiological and biological characteristics of coronaviruses and their ability to cross species barriers are a matter of increasing concerns for these zoonotic agents. To prevent their spread, One Health approaches should be designed to include the host (animal) genome variability as a potential risk factor that might confer genetic resistance or susceptibility to coronavirus infections. At present, there is no example that considers cattle genetic resources for this purpose. In this study, we investigated the variability of six genes (, , and encoding for host receptors of coronaviruses; and encoding for host proteases involved in coronavirus infection) by mining whole genome sequencing datasets from more than 500 cattle of 34 breeds and three related species. We identified a total of 180 protein variants (44 already known from the ARS-UCD1.2 reference genome). Some of them determine altered protein functions or the virus-host interaction and the related virus entry processes. The results obtained in this study constitute a first step towards the definition of a One Health strategy that includes cattle genetic resources as reservoirs of host gene variability useful to design conservation and selection programs to increase resistance to coronavirus diseases.
冠状病毒的流行病学和生物学特性及其跨物种传播的能力，越来越引发人们对这些人畜共患病原体的关注。为防止其传播，应设计“同一健康”方法，将宿主（动物）基因组变异性作为一个潜在风险因素纳入其中，该因素可能赋予对冠状病毒感染的遗传抗性或易感性。目前，尚无将牛遗传资源用于此目的的实例。在本研究中，我们通过挖掘来自34个品种及三个相关物种的500多头牛的全基因组测序数据集，研究了六个基因（编码冠状病毒宿主受体的基因；编码参与冠状病毒感染的宿主蛋白酶的基因）的变异性。我们共鉴定出180种蛋白质变体（其中44种已在ARS-UCD1.2参考基因组中知晓）。其中一些变体决定了蛋白质功能的改变、病毒与宿主的相互作用以及相关的病毒进入过程。本研究获得的结果是迈向定义“同一健康”策略的第一步，该策略将牛遗传资源作为宿主基因变异性的储存库，有助于设计保护和选择计划以增强对冠状病毒疾病的抗性。
