PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Claude Pasquier
AU  - Alain Robichon
TI  - SARS-CoV-2 might manipulate against its host the immunity RNAi/Dicer/Ago system Does mitochondria collapse upon COVID-19 infection?
AID  - 10.1101/2020.04.08.031856
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.04.08.031856
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/04/09/2020.04.08.031856.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/04/09/2020.04.08.031856.full
AB  - The role of the RNAi/Dicer/Ago system to degrade RNA viruses has been elusive, which prompt authors to think that interferon (IFN) synthesis is essential, relegating the dsRNAs as accessory function. We investigate SARS-CoV-2 genome responsible of the new deadly COVID-19 pandemic for the theoretical possibilities to engage intra pairing within the viral RNA and also hybrid pairing with human transcriptome. Segmental pieces of RNAs that originate from SARS-CoV-2 were computationally searched as a potential source of one strand, the complementary strand being from the host transcriptome. We therefore considered perfect complementarity of host RNA with any piece of SARS-CoV-2 RNA as a collection of theoretical siRNAs potentially Dicer substrates. Few human genes seems targeted by SARS-CoV-2 RNA, among them mitochondrial deubiquitinase USP30 and a subunit of ubiquitin protein ligase complex FBXO21 could explain premature death of infected cell by the collapse of mitochondria.