Deciphering the host transcriptional response to SARS-CoV-2 infection

SARS-CoV-2 is a beta coronavirus causing COVID-19 which first emerged in Wuhan, China and was later declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Since then the economical, health and human cost has been enormous for the world. However, little work has been done to understand the transcriptional changes brought about by the virus in human hosts. We have compared COVID-19 positive samples with negative samples from Indian patients to better understand the host response.. We find many genes related to immune response up-regulated in the COVID-19 patients. Many of these are the usual response genes against the viral infection but type I interferon appears to be a key immune response activated against SARS-CoV-2. A large number of the differentially expressed genes were down-regulated pointing towards translational arrest and down regulation of host mRNA during late infection. The down-regulated genes are well correlated with the clinical manifestations and symptoms due to SARS-CoV-2 infection such as the loss of smell and taste. We also find evidence of altered gene expression profiles associated with systemic complications such as neurological disturbances and high insulin requirement. Finally, we have identified many lncRNAs being down-regulated during COVID-19 infections. A few of these lncRNAs have functional role in viral infection. However, to understand the functional role of other lncRNAs, we looked at the function of their closest gene, since lncRNA are believed to have cis functionality. Our analysis suggests a role for lncRNA in down-regulation of metabolic and developmental processes during COVID-19 infection. Overall design: Differential expression analysis of RNA-Seq data from COVID-19 positive samples against COVID-19 negative control