The team of Professor Fu Xianghui of the State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy published a paper in Nature Communications revealing the effect of RNA-G quadruplex on new coronavirus infection...

The team of Prof.

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Novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection relies on the coordinated action of a series of host cytokines, among which Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2) and Serine Protease (TMPRSS2) are particularly important

RNA G-quadruplex (RG4) is a class of non-canonical RNA higher-order structures composed of tandemly repeated guanine (G) nucleotide chains, which can regulate RNA splicing, transport, and Processes such as translation and translation regulate gene expression and participate in the occurrence and development of many life activities and diseases

First, through bioinformatics analysis and a variety of chemical biological methods, this study found that a large number of RG4 loci were enriched in SARS-CoV-2 genomic RNA and the key factors of host cell infection, ACE2 and TMPRSS2

Second, this study evaluated the regulatory effect of RG4 on SARS-CoV-2 infection at the cellular and animal levels using the SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus system

Finally, this study found that the level of TMPRSS2 protein in the lung tissue of patients with novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) was significantly higher than that of uninfected people, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 virus infection may upregulate the expression of TMPRSS2 in host cells and exacerbate the virus infection

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Taken together, this study elucidates the important role of RG4 in SARS-CoV-2 infection and finds that its targeted intervention can effectively hinder viral infection (Figure 2)

The corresponding author of the research paper is Professor Fu Xianghui, postdoctoral fellow Liu Geng and doctoral student Du Wenya are the co-first authors, and West China Hospital of Sichuan University is the first author unit and the corresponding author unit

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