Low expression of EXOSC2 protects against clinical COVID-19 and impedes SARS-CoV-2 replication
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Abstract
New therapeutic targets are a valuable resource for treatment of SARS-CoV-2 viral infection. Genome-wide association studies have identified risk loci associated with COVID-19, but many loci are associated with comorbidities and are not specific to host–virus interactions. Here, we identify and experimentally validate a link between reduced expression of EXOSC2 and reduced SARS-CoV-2 replication. EXOSC2 was one of the 332 host proteins examined, all of which interact directly with SARS-CoV-2 proteins. Aggregating COVID-19 genome-wide association studies statistics for gene-specific eQTLs revealed an association between increased expression of EXOSC2 and higher risk of clinical COVID-19. EXOSC2 interacts with Nsp8 which forms part of the viral RNA polymerase. EXOSC2 is a component of the RNA exosome, and here, LC-MS/MS analysis of protein pulldowns demonstrated interaction between the SARS-CoV-2 RNA polymerase and most of the human RNA exosome components. CRISPR/Cas9 introduction of nonsense mutations within EXOSC2 in Calu-3 cells reduced EXOSC2 protein expression and impeded SARS-CoV-2 replication without impacting cellular viability. Targeted depletion of EXOSC2 may be a safe and effective strategy to protect against clinical COVID-19.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2022.03.06.483172: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization Missing values were randomly imputed with a width of 0.3 and downshift of 1.8 from the standard deviation. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Cell Line Authentication not detected. Table 2: Resources
Antibodies Sentences Resources The membrane was blocked for 1 hour with constant rotation in 2.5% Milk-PBS 0.1% tween20 and incubated overnight at 4°C with the EXOSC2 antibody (Proteintech-66099-1-Ig) or GAPDH antibody (Cell Signaling-14C10) diluted in 2.5% Milk-PBS-0.1% Tween20. EXOSC2suggested: NoneGAPDHsuggested: NoneExperimental Models: Cell Lines Sentences Resources Calu-3 cell culture: Calu-3 cells were cultured in … SciScore for 10.1101/2022.03.06.483172: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization Missing values were randomly imputed with a width of 0.3 and downshift of 1.8 from the standard deviation. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Cell Line Authentication not detected. Table 2: Resources
Antibodies Sentences Resources The membrane was blocked for 1 hour with constant rotation in 2.5% Milk-PBS 0.1% tween20 and incubated overnight at 4°C with the EXOSC2 antibody (Proteintech-66099-1-Ig) or GAPDH antibody (Cell Signaling-14C10) diluted in 2.5% Milk-PBS-0.1% Tween20. EXOSC2suggested: NoneGAPDHsuggested: NoneExperimental Models: Cell Lines Sentences Resources Calu-3 cell culture: Calu-3 cells were cultured in Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle’s Medium (DMEM)/F12 (1:1) GlutaMAX™ (ThermoFisher Scientific) supplemented with 10% FBS, 1% NEAA, 1% sodium pyruvate, 1% penicillin-streptomycin and maintained at 37°C, 5% CO2 and passaged with TrypLE™ Express 1X (ThermoFisher Scientific) when ∼80% confluent. Calu-3suggested: NoneHEK293T cells were used for lentiviral production, plated at a density of 3 × 106 per 10 cm dish. HEK293Tsuggested: NoneThe titre of the SARS-CoV-2 stock was determined by plaque assay using Vero E6 cells. Vero E6suggested: RRID:CVCL_XD71)Experimental Models: Organisms/Strains Sentences Resources SARS-CoV-2 production: SARS-CoV-2 strain Victoria was produced by infecting Vero E6 cells at an MOI of 0.01 in DMEM supplemented with 2% FCS for 72 hours, until cytopathic effects were visible. SARS-CoV-2suggested: NoneRecombinant DNA Sentences Resources Cloning and viral transduction: The human EXOSC2 open-reading frame was amplified from HEK293 cDNA using oligonucleotides: gctagcATGGCGATGGAGATGAGGC (fwd) and ctcgagTCCCTCCTGTTCCAAAAGCCT (rvs) and cloned as a NheI/XhoI PCR fragment into the NheI/XhoI restriction sites of a lentiviral self-inactivating transfer vector (SIN) containing a woodchuck hepatitis virus post regulatory element (W) to overexpress EXOSC2 under a PGK promoter (pLV_SIN-W-PGK-EXOSC2). pLV_SIN-W-PGK-EXOSC2suggested: NoneCells were transfected using a calcium chloride transfection containing 0.5M calcium chloride (Sigma), 2X HEPES Buffered Saline (Sigma) and four lentiviral component plasmids; pCMV delta 8.2 (13 µg), pRSV-Rev (3 µg), pMD.G (3.75 µg) (Addgene) and pLV_SIN-W-PGK-EXOSC2 (13 µg) (Delgon et al., 2000) pCMVsuggested: RRID:Addgene_16459)pRSV-Revsuggested: RRID:Addgene_12253)pMD . Gsuggested: NoneTWe prepared a standard curve using the ORF9 nucleoprotein coding sequence cloned in pcDNA3. 10µg of plasmid was linearised with Apa1 at 37°C for 2 hours. pcDNA3suggested: RRID:Addgene_15475)EXOSC2 reconstitution: 5 µg of pLenti-EXOSC2, with 2.5 µg pR8.91 and 2.5 µg of VSV-G plasmids were transfected in a 15 cm dish of Hek293T cells at 80% confluency. pLenti-EXOSC2suggested: NonepR8.91suggested: NoneVSV-Gsuggested: RRID:Addgene_138479)Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources The system was controlled by Xcalibur 3.0.63 (Thermo Fisher) and DCMSLink (Dionex). Xcalibursuggested: (Thermo Xcalibur, RRID:SCR_014593)Protein group output files generated by MaxQuant were loaded into Perseus version 1.6.10.50. MaxQuantsuggested: (MaxQuant, RRID:SCR_014485)Perseussuggested: (Perseus, RRID:SCR_015753)The mass spectrometry data have been deposited to the ProteomeXchange Consortium via the PRIDE partner repository with the dataset identifier PXD031611. PRIDEsuggested: (Pride-asap, RRID:SCR_012052)CRISPR-Cas9 editing: A sgRNA targeting exon 1 of EXOSC2 (5’-GAUACAAUCACUACGGACAC-3’) was designed using the CRISPOR tool (http://crispor.tefor.net/) (Concordet & Haeussler, 2018). http://crispor.tefor.net/suggested: (CRISPOR, RRID:SCR_015935)The intensity of EXOSC2 band against GAPDH loading control was assessed using ImageJ. qRT-PCR for EXOSC2: Calu-3 cells were lysed on ice using Tri Reagent (Sigma) for 5 minutes in RNase-free conditions. ImageJsuggested: (ImageJ, RRID:SCR_003070)Human transcriptome analysis: Raw Fastq files were trimmed for the presence of Illumina adapter sequences using Cutadapt v1.2.1 (Martin 2011). Cutadaptsuggested: (cutadapt, RRID:SCR_011841)Reads were aligned to hg19 transcripts (n=180,253) using Kallisto v0.46.0 (Bray et al. 2016) to produce gene-level TPM estimates by aggregating transcripts per gene. Kallistosuggested: (kallisto, RRID:SCR_016582)Differential expression analysis was performed using edgeR (Robinson et al. 2010). edgeRsuggested: (edgeR, RRID:SCR_012802)Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.
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.
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- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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