Enriched Opportunistic Pathogens Revealed by Metagenomic Sequencing Hint Potential Linkages between Pharyngeal Microbiota and COVID-19  

作　　者：Dongyan Xiong Caroline Muema Xiaoxu Zhang Xinming Pan Jin Xiong Hang Yang Junping Yu Hongping Wei 

机构地区：[1]CAS Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety,Centre for Biosafety Mega-Sciences,Wuhan Institute of Virology,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Wuhan 430071,China [2]University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100049,China [3]Jiangxia District Center for Disease Control and Prevention,Wuhan 430200,China

出　　处：《Virologica Sinica》2021年第5期924-933,共10页中国病毒学（英文版）

基　　金：financial supports of CAS(project No 153B42KYSB20170004);the Wuhan National Biosafety Lab for this study。

摘　　要：As a respiratory tract virus,SARS-CoV-2 infected people through contacting with the upper respiratory tract first.Previous studies indicated that microbiota could modulate immune response against pathogen infection.In the present study,we performed metagenomic sequencing of pharyngeal swabs from eleven patients with COVID-19 and eleven Non-COVID-19 patients who had similar symptoms such as fever and cough.Through metagenomic analysis of the above two groups and a healthy group from the public data,there are 6502 species identified in the samples.Specifically,the Pielou index indicated a lower evenness of the microbiota in the COVID-19 group than that in the Non-COVID-19 group.Combined with the linear discriminant analysis(LDA)and the generalized linear model,eighty-one bacterial species were found with increased abundance in the COVID-19 group,where 51 species were enriched more than 8 folds.The top three enriched genera were Streptococcus,Prevotella and Campylobacter containing some opportunistic pathogens.More interestingly,through experiments,we found that two Streptococcus strains,S.suis and S.agalactiae,could stimulate the expression of ACE2 of Vero cells in vitro,which may promote SARS-CoV-2 infection.Therefore,these enriched pathogens in the pharynxes of COVID-19 patients may involve in the virus-host interactions to affect SARS-CoV-2 infection and cause potential secondary bacterial infections through changing the expression of the viral receptor ACE2 and/or modulate the host’s immune system.

关 键 词：COVID-19 Metagenome sequencing ACE2 STREPTOCOCCUS PREVOTELLA CAMPYLOBACTER 

分 类 号：R373[医药卫生—病原生物学]