C3ORF19/CCDC174 is differentially expressed and transcriptionally induced in models of coronavirus infection.

Abstract

The coronavirus COVID19 pandemic is an emerging biosafety threat to the nation and the world (1). There are no treatments approved for coronavirus infection in humans (2) and there is a lack of information available regarding the basic transcriptional behavior of human cells and mammalian tissues following coronavirus infection. We mined two independent datasets (3, 4), public (3) and published (4) containing transcriptome data from infection models of the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus and human coronavirus (HCoV) to discover genes that are differentially expressed in coronaviruses and identify potential therapeutic targets and host cell vulnerabilities. We identified C3ORF19, also known as CCDC174 as a conserved differentially expressed gene following coronavirus infection. C3ORF19 may be involved in the cellular response to COVID19 infection.