Abstract
The pathogenesis of COVID-19 is associated with a hyperinflammatory response; however, the precise mechanism of SARS-CoV-2-induced inflammation is poorly understood. Here we investigated direct inflammatory functions of major structural proteins of SARS-CoV-2. We observed that spike (S) protein potently induced inflammatory cytokines and chemokines including IL-6, IL-1b, TNFa, CXCL1, CXCL2, and CCL2, but not IFNs in human and mouse macrophages. No such inflammatory response was observed in response to membrane (M), envelope (E), and nucleocapsid (N) proteins. When stimulated with extracellular S protein, human and mouse lung epithelial cells also produced inflammatory cytokines and chemokines. Interestingly, epithelial cells expressing S protein intracellularly were non-inflammatory, but elicited an inflammatory response in macrophages when co-cultured. Biochemical studies revealed that S protein triggers inflammation via activation of the NF-kB pathway in a MyD88-dependent manner. Further, such an activation of the NF-kB pathway was abrogated in Tlr2-deficient macrophages. Consistently, administration of S protein induced IL-6, TNF-a, and IL-1b in wild-type, but not Tlr2-deficient mice. Notably, upon recognition of S protein, TLR2 dimerizes with TLR1 or TLR6 to activate the NF-kB pathway. Together these data reveal a mechanism for the cytokine storm during SARS-CoV-2 infection and suggest that TLR2 could be a potential therapeutic target for COVID-19.
Data availability
There is no clinical data and large data set in this paper. The raw data for all graphs presented in this paper are submitted in the source data section.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (RP200184)
- Hasan Zaki
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R01DK125352)
- Hasan Zaki
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All studies were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) and were conducted in accordance with the IACUC guidelines and the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. The IACUC permit number is 2016-101683
Reviewing Editor
- Joshua T Schiffer, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, United States
Publication history
- Received: March 19, 2021
- Accepted: December 1, 2021
- Accepted Manuscript published: December 6, 2021 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: December 24, 2021 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2021, Khan et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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