SSX2 is differentially expressed in models of MERS 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 (4-8) 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 SSX2 (9) as a differentially expressed gene following infection of human cells specifically with two types of MERS coronaviruses. and not after infection of human cells with human coronavirus 229E, or and in the lungs of mice and ferrets infected with SARS coronavirus. An SSX2 interacting protein, SSX2IP, was among the genes most differentially expressed in the ferret blood after infection with SARS coronavirus. The expression of SSX2 is modulated to a degree unlike most any other gene following infection with MERS coronaviruses.