High Expression of HERV-K (HML-2) Might Stimulate Interferon in COVID-19 Patients

Figures

• 

  Figure 1. Comparison of the HERV-K (HML-2) gag, env, and pol genes in COVID-19 patients and VERO cells infected with SARS-CoV-2. (A–C) The expression of HERV-K (HML-2) gag, env, and pol genes in health donor (green dot), moderate (blue dot) and severe COVID-19 patients (red dot). (D–F) The expression of HERV-K (HML-2) gag, env, and pol genes in VERO cells control (black column) and VERO cell infected with SARS-CoV-2 (grey column). Each point represents three repeats. The box plots show the medians (middle line) and first and third quartiles (boxes), and the whiskers show the minimum and maximum. Mann–Whitney test p values are depicted in the plots. Mann-Whitney test P-values are depicted in the plots. * p < 0.05, **** p < 0.0001.

• 

  Figure 2. Comparison of interferon-related genes in COVID-19 patients and VERO cells infected with SARS-CoV-2. (A–C) The expression of IFNB1, ISG15, and IFIT1 in health donor (green dot), moderate (blue dot) and severe COVID-19 patients (red dot). (D–E) The expression of ISG15 and IFIT1 in VERO cells control (black column) and VERO cell infected with SARS-CoV-2 (grey column). Each point represents three repeats. The box plots show the medians (middle line) and first and third quartiles (boxes), and the whiskers show the minimum and maximum. Mann–Whitney test p values are depicted in the plots. Mann-Whitney test P-values are depicted in the plots. * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001, **** p < 0.0001.

• 

  Figure 3. Diagram of the genome-wide distribution of highly expressed HERV-K (HML-2) gag, env, and pol. There are 25 HERV-K (HML-2) gag, 36 env and 37 pol loci in the human genome that are highly expressed. The gag locus is represented by a green square, the env locus is represented by a purple circle, the pol locus is represented by an orange triangle, and the gradual colour represents the relative gene expression at different loci.

• 

  Figure 4. GO functional classification of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) among different samples. The distributions of highly expressed (A) HERV-K gag, (B) HERV-K env and (C) HERV-K pol are summarized in three main categories: biological process (BP), molecular function (MF), and cellular component (CC).

• 

  Figure 5. Scatter plot of enriched KEGG pathway statistics. The colour and size of the dots represent the range of the Q−value and the number of DEGs mapped to the indicated pathways, respectively. The top 10 enriched pathways are shown in the figure.