Mouse models of COVID-19 recapitulate inflammatory pathways rather than gene expression

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1010867
• Publication Date: 2022-09-26T17:53:05Z
• Authors: Cameron R. Bishop; Troy Dumenil; Daniel J. Rawle; Thuy T. Le; Kexin Yan; Bing Tang; Gunter Hartel; Andreas Suhrbier
• Keywords: Model Organism

How well mouse models recapitulate the transcriptional profiles seen in humans remains debatable, with both conservation and diversity identified various settings. Herein we use RNA-Seq data bioinformatics approaches to analyze responses SARS-CoV-2 infected lungs, comparing 4 human studies widely used K18-hACE2 model, a model where hACE2 is expressed from ACE2 promoter, that uses adapted virus wild-type mice. Overlap of single copy orthologue differentially genes (scoDEGs) between was generally poor (≈15-35%). Rather than being associated batch, sample treatment, viral load, lung damage or overlaps were primarily due scoDEG expression differences species. Importantly, analyses immune signatures inflammatory pathways illustrated highly significant concordances As immunity immunopathology are focus most studies, these can thus be viewed as representative relevant COVID-19.