长链非编码RNA在脂质代谢中的作用

脂质代谢是人体三大代谢之一，在激素等信号分子的调控下，脂质代谢处于稳定平衡的状态。当稳态被打破，血液中甘油三酯（triglyceride，TG）、胆固醇等水平发生变化，最终引起动脉粥样硬化（atherosclerosis，AS）、肥胖等脂质代谢疾病。长链非编码RNA（long noncoding RNA，lncRNA）是一组不具备蛋白质编码能力，长度大于200个核苷酸的RNA，近来研究发现，lncRNA与机体代谢、炎症和免疫系统以及血管功能的调控密切相关。大量文献表明，lncRNA参与脂质代谢调控，因而有望成为一些脂质代谢疾病的潜在治疗靶点。     

A Reliable Murine Model of Disseminated Infection Induced by Talaromyces Marneffei

Mycopathologia - Talaromycosis (penicilliosis) caused by Talaromyces marneffei is one of the most important opportunistic infection diseases in tropical countries of South and Southeast Asia. Most...     

Conservation of T cell epitopes between seasonal influenza viruses and the novel influenza A H7N9 virus

A novel avian influenza A (H7N9) virus recently emerged in the Yangtze River delta and caused diseases, often severe, in over 130 people. This H7N9 virus appeared to infect humans with greater ease than previous avian influenza virus subtypes such as H5N1 and H9N2. While there are other potential explanations for this large number of human infections with an avian influenza virus, we investigated whether a lack of conserved T-cell epitopes between endemic H1N1 and H3N2 influenza viruses and the novel H7N9 virus contributes to this observation. Here we demonstrate that a number of T cell epitopes are conserved between endemic H1N1 and H3N2 viruses and H7N9 virus. Most of these conserved epitopes are from viral internal proteins. The extent of conservation between endemic human seasonal influenza and avian influenza H7N9 was comparable to that with the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1. Thus, the ease of inter-species transmission of H7N9 viruses (compared with avian H5N1 viruses) cannot be attributed to the lack of conservation of such T cell epitopes. On the contrary, our findings predict significant T-cell based cross-reactions in the human population to the novel H7N9 virus. Our findings also have implications for H7N9 virus vaccine design.