Buffy coat transcriptomic analysis in severe COVID-19 patients

Since the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2) coronavirus pandemic a worldwide race has begun in order to establish the best diagnostic methods, to sequence variants, to develop vaccines, to discover the molecular basis of the virus pathogenesis as well as to describe the cellular factors that lead to the different outcomes of COVID-19. RNAseq approaches have helped to understand the whole scenario of cell response to SARS-CoV-2. In fact, the understanding of the altered cellular mechanisms in the severe outcome of COVID-19 by comparing to the mild outcome can help in the development of preventive policies, treatments and specific drugs for this clinical condition. It was generated a RNA-seq dataset from Buffy Coat samples for 17 COVID-19 patients, including 5 patients with mild symptoms and 12 hospitalized patients with moderate or severe symptoms. It was found 1009 upregulated genes and 501 downregulated genes. From those genes, around 10% are composed of lncRNAs, 133 upregulated and 19 downregulated. The GO and KEGG enrichment analysis revealed that genes ribosome pathway and cellular division was significantly downregulated in the disease critical patients compared to that of the mild infection. The interactome analysis shows that, through lncRNAs, FBL is connected to downregulated transcriptional, translational and ribosomal related genes as SLTM, CPSF6, EIF3H, LARP4, RPS11 and SBDS, indicating a role of this enzyme in the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2.