Deep Time Course Proteomics of SARS-CoV- and SARS-CoV-2-Infected Human Lung Epithelial Cells (Calu-3) Reveals Strong Induction of Interferon-Stimulated Gene Expression by SARS-CoV-2 in Contrast to SARS-CoV

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 infections are characterized by remarkable differences, including infectivity and case fatality rate. The underlying mechanisms are not well understood, illustrating major knowledge gaps of coronavirus biology. In this study, protein expression of the SARS-CoV- and SARS-CoV-2-infected human lung epithelial cell line Calu-3 was analyzed using data-independent acquisition-mass spectrometry. This resulted in a comprehensive map of infection-related proteome-wide expression changes in human cells covering the quantification of 7478 proteins across four time points. Most notably, the activation of interferon type-I response was observed, which is surprisingly absent in several proteome studies. The data reveal that SARS-CoV-2 triggers interferon-stimulated gene expression much stronger than SARS-CoV, which reflects the already described differences in interferon sensitivity. Potentially, this may be caused by the enhanced abundance of the viral M protein of SARS-CoV in comparison to SARS-CoV-2, which is a known inhibitor of type I interferon expression. This study expands the knowledge on the host response to SARS-CoV-2 infections on a global scale using an infection model, which seems to be well suited to analyze the innate immunity.

Automated summary

This study analyzed the protein expression of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 infected human lung cells and found that SARS-CoV-2 triggers a stronger interferon-stimulated gene expression compared to SARS-CoV, possibly due to the higher abundance of viral M protein in SARS-CoV. This study expands our knowledge of the host response to SARS-CoV-2 infections.