Figure 4.

SARS-CoV-2 membrane (M) protein downregulates types I, II, III interferon pathway signaling in CD4+ T cell lines generated from unexposed individuals. Canonical signaling pathways of immunological relevance affected in M protein-specific TCLs (A) indicating a marked suppression interferon signaling pathway and others, including Th1 pathway. (B) Map of the interferon signaling pathway indicating the 9 downstream molecules that were associated with the suppression of interferon, where in green are the genes affected negatively or in red the genes upregulated by SARS-CoV-2 M protein. Feature graph (C) and the violin plot graph (D) showing the average expression and the percent expression of the interferon signaling pathway genes in the respective S-protein-specific CD4⁺ T cell lines and M-protein-specific CD4⁺ T cell lines. Figures 4A and 4B were generated by QIAGEN Ingenuity Pathway Analysis.