Concept Paper
Version 3
This version is not peer-reviewed
Infection-Genomics of COVID-19: Are Some Communities Resistant?
Version 1
: Received: 18 April 2020 / Approved: 19 April 2020 / Online: 19 April 2020 (01:35:58 CEST)
Version 2 : Received: 2 May 2020 / Approved: 4 May 2020 / Online: 4 May 2020 (19:12:33 CEST)
Version 3 : Received: 16 May 2020 / Approved: 17 May 2020 / Online: 17 May 2020 (14:51:39 CEST)
Version 2 : Received: 2 May 2020 / Approved: 4 May 2020 / Online: 4 May 2020 (19:12:33 CEST)
Version 3 : Received: 16 May 2020 / Approved: 17 May 2020 / Online: 17 May 2020 (14:51:39 CEST)
How to cite: Kini, R.M.; Kundu, S. Infection-Genomics of COVID-19: Are Some Communities Resistant?. Preprints 2020, 2020040310 Kini, R.M.; Kundu, S. Infection-Genomics of COVID-19: Are Some Communities Resistant?. Preprints 2020, 2020040310
Abstract
The 2019-Novel Coronavirus has currently gripped the world in terror, affecting 210 countries and territories. Originating from Wuhan, Hubei province, China, the virus has spread so rapidly throughout the world and has already claimed 308,927 lives and is currently afflicting 4.6 million people. The US has over 1.48 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, followed by Spain, Italy, France, UK, Germany, Turkey, Russia, Iran, and China. On careful inspection of the COVID-19 statistics, a peculiar unsettling trend becomes apparent. Western European countries and the US appear to have difficulties in overcoming the catastrophe. In contrast, countries in East Asia, Middle East and mid-Europe have sorted out the situation. Here, we will highlight this trend and propose the importance of infection-genomics (sankramikogenomics), in understanding the susceptibility to COVID-19 and the severity of disease progress. More detailed, systematic evaluation may also identify more susceptible populations. We will also highlight mere 12-fold lower affinity is insufficient to ignore CD147, as interactions occur between tens of spike proteins and equal number of cell surface ACE2 and/or CD147. Thus, both receptors are important to understand sankramikogenomics and severity of COVID-19. The observed ethnic differences in COVID severities may be due to variations in structure or tissue-specific expression (alternate splicing and accessibility) of both the target receptors. Research on both receptors may help in designing improved therapeutic strategies to fight COVID-19. Similar to pharmacogenomics to drug development and precision medicine, Sankramikogenomics will become an important field in other infectious diseases and pathogenicity.
Keywords
ACE2; Spike protein; SARS-CoV2; death rate; polymorphism; isoform variant; CD157, sankramikogenomics
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Virology
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Commenter: R. Manjunatha Kini
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