Mucin 4 Protects Female Mice from Coronavirus Pathogenesis

Jessica A. Plante; Kenneth S. Plante; Lisa E. Gralinski; Anne Beall; Martin T. Ferris; Daniel Bottomly; Richard Green; Shannon K. McWeeney; Mark T. Heise; Ralph S. Baric; Vineet D. Menachery

were located on chromosomes 18, 7, and 12 and explained 12.9%, 12.3%, and 5.4%, 57 respectively, of the observed variation in titers from high 10 2 to low 10 7 PFU/lobe. Thus, while 58 SARS-CoV titer in the lung is clearly influenced by multiple host genetic factors, the preCC QTL 59 on chromosome 16 was chosen for candidate gene selection and validation. Analysis of allele 60 effects revealed that the founder PWK/PhJ was the main driver of low SARS-CoV titer in the 61 lung ( Fig. 1A) , and PWK/PhJ also had lower titers than any other founder strain at four DPI 62 (Gralinski et al., 2015) . We therefore used private SNPs or In/Dels found in PWK/PhJ to reduce 63 the potential targets in the QTL to seven ncRNAs and 74 genes for downstream analysis. 64