Transcriptomic Approaches in Understanding SARS-CoV-2 Infection

SARS-CoV-2 is a critical disease that has recently acquired the pandemic status worldwide. In order to understand the nature of a pandemic in a short course of time, it is important to elucidate the transcriptomic landscapes of the affected cells and tissues. The high volume of data produced as a result of sequencing-infected samples has a high potential of revealing therapeutic targets or significant pathways that can be clinically exploited for drug or vaccine design. In this chapter we have described the genomic elements and transcriptomic products in SARS-CoV-2 and reviewed a few of the several gene expression studies conducted for determining viral infection mechanisms and response to proposed drugs. We have also outlined pathways of significance in infection and disease progression as well as drug repurposing studies in COVID-19.