SARS-CoV-2 Related miRNAs and Their Potential Role in Combating Severe COVID-19

Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), a previous global pandemic, have caused the death of countless patients. However, the molecular mechanism of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) remains unclear. Many reports have declared that miRNAs are associated with severe COVID-19. Therefore, we selected 3 candidate miRNAs to perform a combination of bioinformatic analyses to identify their target genes, lncRNAs, and biological processes that regulate them. Results showed that there were 357 target genes, 98 target lncRNAs. In addition, these miRNAs potentially control those genes through several important processes, including signal transduction and cancer. LncRNA-SNHG16 and lncRNA-NEAT1, which are common between miR-146a-5p and miR-15b-5p play an important role in SARS-CoV-2 infection by regulating SNHG16 and NEAT1. Our preliminary study might be helpful for the development of novel antiviral molecular approaches to fight severe COVID.