Predicting MicroRNAs as Anti-Viral Agents in SARS-CoV-2 Infection based on the Bioinformatics Approach: A Systematic Review

At the beginning of 2020, the world health organization (who) declared severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (sars-cov-2) as responsible for the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) outbreak. previous studies showed that micrornas (mirnas) can inhibit the pathogenesis of dna or rna viruses by binding the genome. the purpose of the current study was an overview of the anti-viral role of cellular mirnas against covid-19 infection. our search was limited to all published original papers in the english language from 2019 to 2021 using several databases including pubmed, google scholar, scopus, and science direct. a manual search of references for included articles was also performed. among 66 electronically searched citations, 17 papers met the inclusion criteria. the presence of mirnas during the covid-19 infection, reported by several studies, predicts the possibility of using mirnas as potential tools to eradicate the sars-cov-2 infection. in some studies, mirnas have presented as a tool for targeting sars-cov-2 encoded genes which are essential in viral biogenesis, entrance, replication, and infection. the comparison of mirna between sars-cov-2 with other human coronaviruses will help the better understanding of distinct clinical characteristics.