The miRNA COMPLEXES AGAINST CORONAVIRUSES COVID-19, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV

Abstract The possibility of using miRNA (mRNA-inhibiting RNA) to inhibit infections caused by the coronaviruses COVID-19, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV has been shown. Using bioinformatics approaches, completely complementary miRNA (cc-miRNA) complexes were predicted to be able to bind and inhibit the translation of coronavirus proteins and the replication of COVID-19, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV genomes. For complexes of seven cc-miRc for COVID-19, seven cc-miRs for SARS-CoV, and eight cc-miRm for MERS-CoV, the interactions with the RNA genomes (gRNAs) of the corresponding coronaviruses was evaluated. The free energy of the interactions of cc-miRNAs with binding sites was significantly higher than the free energy of the interactions with other regions in gRNA, which ensures high selectivity of the binding of cc-miRNAs. Weak binding of cc-miRNAs to the mRNAs of 17508 human genes was shown, which suggests the absence of side effects of the cc-miRNAs in humans. A feature of this method is the simultaneous inhibition of translation and replication by several cc-miRNAs binding from the 5' end to the 3' end of gRNA. The use of several cc-miRNAs to suppress infections allows each of them to be used at a lower concentration to avoid side effects when one cc-miRNA is introduced into humans at a high concentration.