Cytokine systems approach demonstrates differences in innate and pro-inflammatory host responses between genetically distinct MERS-CoV isolates

Selinger, Christian; Tisoncik-Go, Jennifer; Menachery, Vineet D; Agnihothram, Sudhakar; Law, G Lynn; Chang, Jean; Kelly, Sara M; Sova, Pavel; Baric, Ralph S; Katze, Michael G

To further investigate MERS-CoV regulation of innate immune and pro-inflammatory responses, we utilized an established human airway culture system to examine cellular responses against two genetically distinct MERS-CoV strains, a primary isolate obtained from a Qatari patient treated at a London hospital in September 2012 who later died after prolonged illness in June 2013 (herein referred to as MERS-CoV Eng 1) [2] and MERS-CoV SA 1 (herein referred to as MERS-CoV SA 1), the first virus identified from a fatal case in Saudi Arabia in June 2012 [1] . There are a total of 29 amino acid differences between these two viruses spanning the length of the viral genome, as well as deletions of two amino acids in the nucleocapsid protein of MERS-CoV Eng 1 compared to MERS-CoV SA 1 [14] .