Combatting infectious diseases through understanding epigenetic interference – A case study: SARS-CoV-2

Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused 6.5 M deaths globally. Despite currently available vaccines and treatments, we need more effective therapeutics to combat the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic which remains a major global health and economic challenge.

RNAaemia (a high level of viral RNA in the blood) is a predictor of poor health outcomes in COVID-19. Therefore, the MOD-RNA pipeline was developed to analyze RNA produced by SARS-CoV-2, but in a manner consistent with the principle that RNA is the epicenter of genetic information. My research reveals SARS-CoV-2 produces small RNAs with an affinity for human genome enhancer regions. These findings support that SARS-CoV-2 has evolved epigenetic interference to promote viral propagation by abrogating transcriptional networks critical to the infection process.

To facilitate ongoing surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, I plan to continue building out MOD-RNA as an open-access tool, which will also be broadly applicable to other current and emerging pathogens. This research and further development of MOD-RNA is critical to our fight against SARS-CoV-2 because of the potential to find new therapeutic opportunities against COVID-19.