人类抗病毒感染的“RNAi自限假说”及其初步论证

Preliminary Demonstration of “RNAi Self-limiting Hypothesis” for Human Anti-virus Infection Based on Balance Theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine

提出人类抗病毒感染的"RNAi自限假说":在反转录酶和整合酶介导下,部分侵染病毒的mRNA被人类或其他动物宿主随机反转录成cDNA分子,并整合进宿主基因组中,形成能够抑制同种病毒增殖的免疫RNA(imRNA)分子。imRNA激活宿主的小RNA依赖性的防御机制,抑制病毒在宿主体内的繁殖扩增,使被感染宿主与侵染病毒之间达成一种"病毒持续低水平存在而宿主无明显病征"的潜伏感染状态。本研究进一步从"人类基因组中反转录酶基因和整合酶基因类似功能序列的存在性"、"人类基因组中病毒基因组片段的存在性",以及"病毒感染动物模型"三方面,初步论证假说的科学性,并简述假说在"病毒病流行趋势预测"方面的应用。上述假说与中医理论精神交融,应用中药干预病毒与宿主的互作程序,促使二者建立和谐共处的潜伏感染状态,而非直接抑杀病毒,应是研发抗病毒中药新药的新思路。

A new hypothesis for human anti-virus infection,named RNAi self-limiting hypothesis,is proposed in the paper. In the endogenous reverse transcriptase and integrase mediated,viral mRNAs are randomly re- verse transcribed into cDNAs in host cell,some of which are integrated into human genome,and further transcribed into an immunospecific RNA（imRNA） with the function of inhibiting of the same viral multipli- cation in infected cells by the RNA interference mechanism, imRNA activates host small RNA-dependent defense mechanisms to suppress the viral multiplication,and establish a latent infection state between virus and host,which host remains persistently viral infection at low level without obvious signs of disease. This hypothesis is initially tested from three aspects of the existence of the reverse transcriptase-like and inte- grase-like genes in human genome,the existence of viral homologous sequences in human genome,and virus-infected animal model. Furthermore ,implication of hypothesis in forecasting viral disease epidemic trend is briefly discussed in the paper. The hypothesis was spiritual communion with the traditional Chinese medicine theory ＂balance＂. Establishing a harmonious coexistence of latent infection between virus and host