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Hasankhani A, Bahrami A, Sheybani N, Aria B, Hemati B, Fatehi F, Ghaem Maghami Farahani H, Javanmard G, Rezaee M, Kastelic JP, Barkema HW. Differential Co-Expression Network Analysis Reveals Key Hub-High Traffic Genes as Potential Therapeutic Targets for COVID-19 Pandemic. Front Immunol 2021; 12:789317. [PMID: 34975885 PMCID: PMC8714803 DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.789317] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/04/2021] [Accepted: 11/26/2021] [Indexed: 01/08/2023] Open
Abstract
Background The recent emergence of COVID-19, rapid worldwide spread, and incomplete knowledge of molecular mechanisms underlying SARS-CoV-2 infection have limited development of therapeutic strategies. Our objective was to systematically investigate molecular regulatory mechanisms of COVID-19, using a combination of high throughput RNA-sequencing-based transcriptomics and systems biology approaches. Methods RNA-Seq data from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of healthy persons, mild and severe 17 COVID-19 patients were analyzed to generate a gene expression matrix. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was used to identify co-expression modules in healthy samples as a reference set. For differential co-expression network analysis, module preservation and module-trait relationships approaches were used to identify key modules. Then, protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks, based on co-expressed hub genes, were constructed to identify hub genes/TFs with the highest information transfer (hub-high traffic genes) within candidate modules. Results Based on differential co-expression network analysis, connectivity patterns and network density, 72% (15 of 21) of modules identified in healthy samples were altered by SARS-CoV-2 infection. Therefore, SARS-CoV-2 caused systemic perturbations in host biological gene networks. In functional enrichment analysis, among 15 non-preserved modules and two significant highly-correlated modules (identified by MTRs), 9 modules were directly related to the host immune response and COVID-19 immunopathogenesis. Intriguingly, systemic investigation of SARS-CoV-2 infection identified signaling pathways and key genes/proteins associated with COVID-19's main hallmarks, e.g., cytokine storm, respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), acute lung injury (ALI), lymphopenia, coagulation disorders, thrombosis, and pregnancy complications, as well as comorbidities associated with COVID-19, e.g., asthma, diabetic complications, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), liver disorders and acute kidney injury (AKI). Topological analysis with betweenness centrality (BC) identified 290 hub-high traffic genes, central in both co-expression and PPI networks. We also identified several transcriptional regulatory factors, including NFKB1, HIF1A, AHR, and TP53, with important immunoregulatory roles in SARS-CoV-2 infection. Moreover, several hub-high traffic genes, including IL6, IL1B, IL10, TNF, SOCS1, SOCS3, ICAM1, PTEN, RHOA, GDI2, SUMO1, CASP1, IRAK3, HSPA5, ADRB2, PRF1, GZMB, OASL, CCL5, HSP90AA1, HSPD1, IFNG, MAPK1, RAB5A, and TNFRSF1A had the highest rates of information transfer in 9 candidate modules and central roles in COVID-19 immunopathogenesis. Conclusion This study provides comprehensive information on molecular mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2-host interactions and identifies several hub-high traffic genes as promising therapeutic targets for the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Affiliation(s)
- Aliakbar Hasankhani
- Department of Animal Science, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran
| | - Abolfazl Bahrami
- Department of Animal Science, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran
- Biomedical Center for Systems Biology Science Munich, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany
| | - Negin Sheybani
- Department of Animal and Poultry Science, College of Aburaihan, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
| | - Behzad Aria
- Department of Physical Education and Sports Science, School of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran
| | - Behzad Hemati
- Biotechnology Research Center, Karaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran
| | - Farhang Fatehi
- Department of Animal Science, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran
| | | | - Ghazaleh Javanmard
- Department of Animal Science, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran
| | - Mahsa Rezaee
- Department of Medical Mycology, School of Medical Science, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
| | - John P. Kastelic
- Department of Production Animal Health, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
| | - Herman W. Barkema
- Department of Production Animal Health, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
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Saha C, Laha S, Chatterjee R, Bhattacharyya NP. Co-Regulation of Protein Coding Genes by Transcription Factor and Long Non-Coding RNA in SARS-CoV-2 Infected Cells: An In Silico Analysis. Noncoding RNA 2021; 7:74. [PMID: 34940755 PMCID: PMC8708613 DOI: 10.3390/ncrna7040074] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/15/2021] [Revised: 11/15/2021] [Accepted: 11/19/2021] [Indexed: 12/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Altered expression of protein coding gene (PCG) and long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) have been identified in SARS-CoV-2 infected cells and tissues from COVID-19 patients. The functional role and mechanism (s) of transcriptional regulation of deregulated genes in COVID-19 remain largely unknown. In the present communication, reanalyzing publicly available gene expression data, we observed that 66 lncRNA and 5491 PCG were deregulated in more than one experimental condition. Combining our earlier published results and using different publicly available resources, it was observed that 72 deregulated lncRNA interacted with 3228 genes/proteins. Many targets of deregulated lncRNA could also interact with SARS-CoV-2 coded proteins, modulated by IFN treatment and identified in CRISPR screening to modulate SARS-CoV-2 infection. The majority of the deregulated lncRNA and PCG were targets of at least one of the transcription factors (TFs), interferon responsive factors (IRFs), signal transducer, and activator of transcription (STATs), NFκB, MYC, and RELA/p65. Deregulated 1069 PCG was joint targets of lncRNA and TF. These joint targets are significantly enriched with pathways relevant for SARS-CoV-2 infection indicating that joint regulation of PCG could be one of the mechanisms for deregulation. Over all this manuscript showed possible involvement of lncRNA and mechanisms of deregulation of PCG in the pathogenesis of COVID-19.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chinmay Saha
- Department of Genome Science, School of Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Kalyani, Nadia 741235, India;
| | - Sayantan Laha
- Human Genetics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, 203 B. T. Road, Kolkata 700108, India; (S.L.); (R.C.)
| | - Raghunath Chatterjee
- Human Genetics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, 203 B. T. Road, Kolkata 700108, India; (S.L.); (R.C.)
| | - Nitai P. Bhattacharyya
- Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education & Research and Seth Sukhlal Karnani Memorial Hospital, Kolkata 700020, India
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Tayara H, Abdelbaky I, To Chong K. Recent omics-based computational methods for COVID-19 drug discovery and repurposing. Brief Bioinform 2021; 22:6355836. [PMID: 34423353 DOI: 10.1093/bib/bbab339] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/22/2021] [Revised: 07/09/2021] [Indexed: 12/22/2022] Open
Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is the main reason for the increasing number of deaths worldwide. Although strict quarantine measures were followed in many countries, the disease situation is still intractable. Thus, it is needed to utilize all possible means to confront this pandemic. Therefore, researchers are in a race against the time to produce potential treatments to cure or reduce the increasing infections of COVID-19. Computational methods are widely proving rapid successes in biological related problems, including diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Many efforts in recent months utilized Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques in the context of fighting the spread of COVID-19. Providing periodic reviews and discussions of recent efforts saves the time of researchers and helps to link their endeavors for a faster and efficient confrontation of the pandemic. In this review, we discuss the recent promising studies that used Omics-based data and utilized AI algorithms and other computational tools to achieve this goal. We review the established datasets and the developed methods that were basically directed to new or repurposed drugs, vaccinations and diagnosis. The tools and methods varied depending on the level of details in the available information such as structures, sequences or metabolic data.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hilal Tayara
- School of international Engineering and Science, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju 54896, Republic of Korea
| | - Ibrahim Abdelbaky
- Artificial Intelligence Department, Faculty of Computers and Artificial Intelligence, Benha University, Banha 13518, Egypt
| | - Kil To Chong
- Department of Electronics and Information Engineering, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju, Jeollabukdo 54896, Republic of Korea.,Advances Electronics and Information Research Center, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju 54896, Republic of Korea
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Ghosh N, Saha I, Sharma N. Interactome of human and SARS-CoV-2 proteins to identify human hub proteins associated with comorbidities. Comput Biol Med 2021; 138:104889. [PMID: 34655901 PMCID: PMC8492901 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104889] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/31/2021] [Revised: 09/22/2021] [Accepted: 09/22/2021] [Indexed: 02/06/2023]
Abstract
SARS-CoV-2 has a higher chance of progression in adults of any age with certain underlying health conditions or comorbidities like cancer, neurological diseases and in certain cases may even lead to death. Like other viruses, SARS-CoV-2 also interacts with host proteins to pave its entry into host cells. Therefore, to understand the behaviour of SARS-CoV-2 and design of effective antiviral drugs, host-virus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) can be very useful. In this regard, we have initially created a human-SARS-CoV-2 PPI database from existing works in the literature which has resulted in 7085 unique PPIs. Subsequently, we have identified at most 10 proteins with highest degrees viz. hub proteins from interacting human proteins for individual virus protein. The identification of these hub proteins is important as they are connected to most of the other human proteins. Consequently, when they get affected, the potential diseases are triggered in the corresponding pathways, thereby leading to comorbidities. Furthermore, the biological significance of the identified hub proteins is shown using KEGG pathway and GO enrichment analysis. KEGG pathway analysis is also essential for identifying the pathways leading to comorbidities. Among others, SARS-CoV-2 proteins viz. NSP2, NSP5, Envelope and ORF10 interacting with human hub proteins like COX4I1, COX5A, COX5B, NDUFS1, CANX, HSP90AA1 and TP53 lead to comorbidities. Such comorbidities are Alzheimer, Parkinson, Huntington, HTLV-1 infection, prostate cancer and viral carcinogenesis. Subsequently, using Enrichr tool possible repurposable drugs which target the human hub proteins are reported in this paper as well. Therefore, this work provides a consolidated study for human-SARS-CoV-2 protein interactions to understand the relationship between comorbidity and hub proteins so that it may pave the way for the development of anti-viral drugs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nimisha Ghosh
- Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, Institute of Technical Education and Research, Siksha 'O' Anusandhan (Deemed to Be University), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India; Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
| | - Indrajit Saha
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technical Teachers' Training and Research, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
| | - Nikhil Sharma
- Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India
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Auwul MR, Zhang C, Rahman MR, Shahjaman M, Alyami SA, Moni MA. Network-based transcriptomic analysis identifies the genetic effect of COVID-19 to chronic kidney disease patients: A bioinformatics approach. Saudi J Biol Sci 2021; 28:5647-5656. [PMID: 34127904 PMCID: PMC8190333 DOI: 10.1016/j.sjbs.2021.06.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/05/2021] [Revised: 06/01/2021] [Accepted: 06/02/2021] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
COVID-19 has emerged as global health threats. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients are immune-compromised and may have a high risk of infection by the SARS-CoV-2. We aimed to detect common transcriptomic signatures and pathways between COVID-19 and CKD by systems biology analysis. We analyzed transcriptomic data obtained from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) infected with SARS-CoV-2 and PBMC of CKD patients. We identified 49 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) which were common between COVID-19 and CKD. The gene ontology and pathways analysis showed the DEGs were associated with "platelet degranulation", "regulation of wound healing", "platelet activation", "focal adhesion", "regulation of actin cytoskeleton" and "PI3K-Akt signalling pathway". The protein-protein interaction (PPI) network encoded by the common DEGs showed ten hub proteins (EPHB2, PRKAR2B, CAV1, ARHGEF12, HSP90B1, ITGA2B, BCL2L1, E2F1, TUBB1, and C3). Besides, we identified significant transcription factors and microRNAs that may regulate the common DEGs. We investigated protein-drug interaction analysis and identified potential drugs namely, aspirin, estradiol, rapamycin, and nebivolol. The identified common gene signature and pathways between COVID-19 and CKD may be therapeutic targets in COVID-19 patients with CKD comorbidity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Md. Rabiul Auwul
- School of Economics and Statistics, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China
| | - Chongqi Zhang
- School of Economics and Statistics, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China
| | - Md Rezanur Rahman
- Department of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Islamic University, Kushtia 7003, Bangladesh
- Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, School of Biomedical Science, Khwaja Yunus Ali University, Enayetpur, Sirajganj 6751, Bangladesh
| | - Md. Shahjaman
- Department of Statistics, Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur 5400, Bangladesh
| | - Salem A. Alyami
- Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Saudi Arabia
| | - Mohammad Ali Moni
- WHO Collaborating Centre on eHealth, UNSW Digital Health, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney, Australia
- The Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Healthy Ageing Theme, Darlinghurst, NSW 2010, Australia
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Shahjaman M, Rezanur Rahman M, Rabiul Auwul M. A network-based systems biology approach for identification of shared Gene signatures between male and female in COVID-19 datasets. INFORMATICS IN MEDICINE UNLOCKED 2021; 25:100702. [PMID: 34423108 PMCID: PMC8372456 DOI: 10.1016/j.imu.2021.100702] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/15/2021] [Revised: 08/12/2021] [Accepted: 08/13/2021] [Indexed: 12/14/2022] Open
Abstract
The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has expanded rapidly worldwide. Now it has covered more than 150 countries worldwide. It is referred to as COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 mainly affects the respiratory systems of humans that can lead up to serious illness or even death in the presence of different comorbidities. However, most COVID-19 infected people show mild to moderate symptoms, and no medication is suggested. Still, drugs of other diseases have been used to treat COVID-19. Nevertheless, the absence of vaccines and proper drugs against the COVID-19 virus has increased the mortality rate. Albeit sex is a risk factor for COVID-19, none of the studies considered this risk factor for identifying biomarkers from the RNASeq count dataset. Men are more likely to undertake severe symptoms with different comorbidities and show greater mortality compared with women. From this standpoint, we aim to identify shared gene signatures between males and females from the human COVID-19 RNAseq count dataset of peripheral blood cells using a robust voom approach. We identified 1341 overlapping DEGs between male and female datasets. The gene ontology (GO) annotation and pathway enrichment analysis revealed that DEGs are involved in various BP categories such as nucleosome assembly, DNA conformation change, DNA packaging, and different KEGG pathways such as cell cycle, ECM-receptor interaction, progesterone-mediated oocyte maturation, etc. Ten hub-proteins (UBC, KIAA0101, APP, CDK1, SUMO2, SP1, FN1, CDK2, E2F1, and TP53) were unveiled using PPI network analysis. The top three miRNAs (mir-17-5p, mir-20a-5p, mir-93-5p) and TFs (PPARG, E2F1 and KLF5) were uncovered. In conclusion, the top ten significant drugs (roscovitine, curcumin, simvastatin, fulvestrant, troglitazone, alvocidib, L-alanine, tamoxifen, serine, and doxorubicin) were retrieved using drug repurposing analysis of overlapping DEGs, which might be therapeutic agents of COVID-19.
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Affiliation(s)
- Md Shahjaman
- Department of Statistics, Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur, 5400, Bangladesh
| | - Md Rezanur Rahman
- Department of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, Islamic University, Kushtia, Bangladesh
| | - Md Rabiul Auwul
- Department of Statistics, Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur, 5400, Bangladesh
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