RT Journal Article
T1 No evidence of human genome integration of SARS-CoV-2 found by long-read DNA sequencing.
A1 Smits, Nathan
A1 Rasmussen, Jay
A1 Bodea, Gabriela O
A1 Amarilla, Alberto A
A1 Gerdes, Patricia
A1 Sanchez-Luque, Francisco J
A1 Ajjikuttira, Prabha
A1 Modhiran, Naphak
A1 Liang, Benjamin
A1 Faivre, Jamila
A1 Deveson, Ira W
A1 Khromykh, Alexander A
A1 Watterson, Daniel
A1 Ewing, Adam D
A1 Faulkner, Geoffrey J
K1 COVID-19
K1 L1
K1 LINE-1
K1 SARS-CoV-2
K1 hepatitis B virus
K1 retrotransposon
AB A recent study proposed that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) hijacks the LINE-1 (L1) retrotransposition machinery to integrate into the DNA of infected cells. If confirmed, this finding could have significant clinical implications. Here, we apply deep (>50×) long-read Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) sequencing to HEK293T cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 and do not find the virus integrated into the genome. By examining ONT data from separate HEK293T cultivars, we completely resolve 78 L1 insertions arising in vitro in the absence of L1 overexpression systems. ONT sequencing applied to hepatitis B virus (HBV)-positive liver cancer tissues located a single HBV insertion. These experiments demonstrate reliable resolution of retrotransposon and exogenous virus insertions by ONT sequencing. That we find no evidence of SARS-CoV-2 integration suggests that such events are, at most, extremely rare in vivo and therefore are unlikely to drive oncogenesis or explain post-recovery detection of the virus.
YR 2021
FD 2021-07-28
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10668/18360
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10668/18360
LA en
DS RISalud
RD Mar 14, 2025