Fractional diffusion on the human proteome as an alternative to the multi-organ damage of SARS-CoV-2

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Abstract

The coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) respiratory disease is caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2), which uses the enzyme ACE2 to enter human cells. This disease is characterized by important damage at a multi-organ level, partially due to the abundant expression of ACE2 in practically all human tissues. However, not every organ in which ACE2 is abundant is affected by SARS-CoV-2, which suggests the existence of other multi-organ routes for transmitting the perturbations produced by the virus. We consider here diffusive processes through the protein–protein interaction (PPI) network of proteins targeted by SARS-CoV-2 as an alternative route. We found a subdiffusive regime that allows the propagation of virus perturbations through the PPI network at a significant rate. By following the main subdiffusive routes across the PPI network, we identify proteins mainly expressed in the heart, cerebral cortex, thymus, testis, lymph node, kidney, among others of the organs reported to be affected by COVID-19.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.21.107912: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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