COVID-2019-associated overexpressed Prevotella proteins mediated host-pathogen interactions and their role in coronavirus outbreak.

Motivation: The outbreak of COVID-2019 initiated at Wuhan, China has become a global threat by rapid transmission and severe fatalities. Recent studies have uncovered whole genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 (causing COVID-2019). In addition, lung metagenomic studies on infected patients revealed overrepresented Prevotella spp. producing certain proteins in abundance. We performed host-pathogen protein-protein interaction analysis between SARS-CoV-2 and overrepresented Prevotella proteins with human proteome. We also performed functional overrepresentation analysis of interacting proteins to understand their role in COVID-2019 severity.

Results: It was found that overexpressed Prevotella proteins can promote viral infection. As per the results, Prevotella proteins, but not viral proteins, are involved in multiple interactions with NF-kB, which is involved in increasing clinical severity of COVID-2019. Prevotella may have role in COVID-2019 outbreak and should be given importance for understanding disease mechanisms and improving treatment outcomes.

Supplementary Information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.