Abstract
The novel β-coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has infected more than 177 million people and resulted in 3.84 million death worldwide. Recent epidemiological studies suggested that some environmental factors, such as air pollution, might be the important contributors to the mortality of COVID-19. However, how environmental exposure enhances the severity of COVID-19 remains to be fully understood. In the present report, we provided evidence showing that
mdig
, a previously reported environmentally-induced oncogene that antagonizes repressive trimethylation of histone proteins, is an important regulator for SARS-CoV-2 receptors neuropilin-1 (NRP1) and NRP2, cathepsins, glycan metabolism and inflammation, key determinants for viral infection and cytokine storm of the patients. Depletion of
mdig
in bronchial epithelial cells by CRISPR-Cas-9 gene editing resulted in a decreased expression of NRP1, NRP2, cathepsins, and genes involved in protein glycosylation and inflammation, largely due to a substantial enrichment of lysine 9 and/or lysine 27 trimethylation of histone H3 (H3K9me3/H3K27me3) on these genes as determined by ChIP-seq. Meanwhile, we also validated that environmental factor arsenic is able to induce
mdig
, NRP1 and NRP2, and genetic disruption of
mdig
lowered expression of NRP1 and NRP2. Furthermore,
mdig
may coordinate with the Neanderthal variants linked to an elevated mortality of COVID-19. These data, thus, suggest that
mdig
is a key mediator for the severity of COVID-19 in response to environmental exposure and targeting
mdig
may be the one of the effective strategies in ameliorating the symptom and reducing the mortality of COVID-19.