Genetic Insights into the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Infection among Saudi People

Background: The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) was isolated for the first time in Saudi Arabia from a patient suffering from atypical pneumonia. The Saudi Genome database was built by King Abdulaziz Medical City via the next-generation sequencing of 7000 candidates. Method: A large list of point mutations were reported in the region of the dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP4) gene. The DPP4 amino acid residues correlated to MERS-CoV entry and the site of activity of DPP4 inhibitors was investigated. We retrieved the SNPs (Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism) with a variation frequency of >0.05. Results: SNP 2:162,890,175 and SNP 2:162,891,848 in the intronic region were located within 50 bp of amino acid residues responsible for MERS-CoV entry, amino acids 259–296 and 205–258, respectively. The variation frequency of SNP 2:162,890,175 was 2321 out of 2379 screened individuals. Moreover, mutation of SNP 2:162,891,848, which is located near amino acid residues E205 and E206 (crucial for the activity of DPP4 inhibitors), occurred in 76 out of 2379 screened individuals. Conclusions: Our study shows high variation frequency in the DPP4 region reported in the Saudi Genome database. The identified SNPs are of high significance for MERS-CoV infection in better understanding disease pathogenesis.