Comment on "Stress Decreases Host Viral Resistance and Increases Covid Susceptibility in Embryonic Stem Cells".

Dear editor

We read with interest a published article by Mohammed Abdulhasan which is published in Stem Cell Reviews and Reports [1]. This article has described the role of stress in host viral resistance and susceptibility to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in embryonic stem cells [1].

The authors used COVID-19 as the name of virus, also in this article mistakenly called the SARS-CoV, as COVID-1 and called SARS-CoV-2, as COVID-2 or SARS2. Furthermore, the authors reported coronaviruses have a large genome of 30mb, 3 open reading frames producing 29 proteins, and genomic proof reading [1]. However, according scientific evidence the genome of these coronaviruses is approximately 30 kb. In addition, the authors stated that, of the 7 total and 3 severe human coronaviruses (Cov1, Cov2, MERS), only Cov2 infects both the upper respiratory tract and lungs [1], although MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV can infect both the upper respiratory tract and lungs [2].

Viruses in Coronaviridae family are considered as enveloped viruses that contain large and single-stranded RNA genomes with ranging in length from 27 to 33 kb [3, 4]. Two overlapping ORFs include ORF1a and ORF1b are translated from the genome and generate polypeptides, which are cleaved into 16 nonstructural proteins. Also, these viruses have several other ORFs to encode structural and accessory proteins [4, 5].