Identification of required host factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection in human cells [RNA-seq]

RNA-seq was performed to determine gene expression (RNA) levels and SARS-CoV-2 viral reads in A549-ACE2 cells treated with DMSO or Amlodipine. ACE2-A549s cells were treated with either DMSO or amlodipine (Millipore Sigma, Cat #A5605) resuspended in DMSO one hour before infection. Amlodipine was used at a concentration of 10uM. A549-ACE2 cells were infected at MOI of 0.1 with SARS-CoV-2 for 24 hours before harvest. RNA-seq libraries were built from 1ug of RNA per sample using the TruSeq Stranded mRNA Library Prep Kit (Illumina) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Sequencing libraries were sequenced using an Illumina NextSeq 500 platform and fastq files were generated using bcl2fastq (Illumina). Reads were aligned to hg19 using STAR aligner via the RNA-Seq Alignment application (Basespace, Illumina). Alignments to the SARS-CoV-2 genome (GenBank: MN985325.1) were determined using bowtie (Robinson et al., 2010).