Frontiers in Microbiology (Oct 2021)

Innate Immunity Evasion Strategies of Highly Pathogenic Coronaviruses: SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2

  • Jin-Yan Li,
  • Zhi-Jian Zhou,
  • Qiong Wang,
  • Qing-Nan He,
  • Ming-Yi Zhao,
  • Ye Qiu,
  • Xing-Yi Ge

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2021.770656
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12

Abstract

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In the past two decades, coronavirus (CoV) has emerged frequently in the population. Three CoVs (SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2) have been identified as highly pathogenic human coronaviruses (HP-hCoVs). Particularly, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 warns that HP-hCoVs present a high risk to human health. Like other viruses, HP-hCoVs interact with their host cells in sophisticated manners for infection and pathogenesis. Here, we reviewed the current knowledge about the interference of HP-hCoVs in multiple cellular processes and their impacts on viral infection. HP-hCoVs employed various strategies to suppress and evade from immune response, including shielding viral RNA from recognition by pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), impairing IFN-I production, blocking the downstream pathways of IFN-I, and other evasion strategies. This summary provides a comprehensive view of the interplay between HP-hCoVs and the host cells, which is helpful to understand the mechanism of viral pathogenesis and develop antiviral therapies.

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