GEM/Kir is differentially expressed in multiple models of coronavirus infection.
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 multiple independent public (3) or published datasets (4-7) containing transcriptome data from infection models of human coronavirus 229E, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus to discover genes whose differential expression was conserved across the coronavirus family. We identified the GTP binding protein overexpressed in skeletal muscle, GEM (8), also known as Kir, as a differentially expressed gene following infection of human cells with two types of MERS coronavirus, after infection of human cells with human coronavirus 229E, and in the lungs of mice and ferrets infected with SARS coronavirus. GEM induction after viral infection appears to be conserved across the coronavirus family and may be found in patients infected with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.