ORF3a-Mediated Incomplete Autophagy Facilitates Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 Replication

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the causative agent for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and there is an urgent need to understand the cellular response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Beclin 1 is an essential scaffold autophagy protein that forms two distinct subcomplexes with modulators Atg14 and UVRAG, responsible for autophagosome formation and maturation, respectively. In the present study, we found that SARS-CoV-2 infection triggers an incomplete autophagy response, elevated autophagosome formation but impaired autophagosome maturation, and declined autophagy by genetic knockout of essential autophagic genes reduces SARS-CoV-2 replication efficiency. By screening 26 viral proteins of SARS-CoV-2, we demonstrated that expression of ORF3a alone is sufficient to induce incomplete autophagy. Mechanistically, SARS-CoV-2 ORF3a interacts with autophagy regulator UVRAG to facilitate PI3KC3-C1 (Beclin-1-Vps34-Atg14) but selectively inhibit PI3KC3-C2 (Beclin-1-Vps34-UVRAG). Interestingly, although SARS-CoV ORF3a shares 72.7% amino acid identity with the SARS-CoV-2 ORF3a, the former had no effect on cellular autophagy response. Thus, our findings provide the mechanistic evidence of possible takeover of host autophagy machinery by ORF3a to facilitate SARS-CoV-2 replication and raise the possibility of targeting the autophagic pathway for the treatment of COVID-19.