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Updated: Sep 25, 2025
MicroRNA-based Regulation of Picornavirus Tropism
Published on: February 6, 2017
MicroRNAs as the Potential Regulators of SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Modifiers of the COVID-19 Clinical Features
A N Kucher1, Iu A Koroleva1, A A Zarubin1
1Research Institute of Medical Genetics, Tomsk National Research Medical Center, Russian Academy of Sciences, 634050 Tomsk, Russia.
Abstract:
The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) warrants the identification of factors that may determine both risk and severity of infection. The factors include microRNAs that have a wide regulatory potential and hence are particularly interesting. The review focuses on the potential roles of human microRNAs and the viral genome as well as microRNAs in SARS-CoV-2 infection and clinical features of COVID-19. The review summarizes the information about the human microRNAs that are thought to specifically bind to the SARS-CoV-2 genome and considers their expression levels in various organs (cells) in both healthy state and pathologies that are risk factors for severe COVID-19. Potential mechanisms whereby SARS-CoV-2 may affect the clinical features of COVID-19 are discussed in brief. The mechanisms include blocking of human microRNAs and RNA-binding proteins, changes in gene expression in infected cells, and possible epigenetic modifications of the human genome with the participation of coronavirus microRNAs.
Supplementary Information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1134/S0026893322010034.
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