microRNA作为传染性疾病标志物的研究进展

Micro RNAs as Biomarkers of Infectious Diseases

传染性疾病往往具有较大的传染性,易于大面积流行,且难以控制,严重危害人们生命健康,快速准确的筛查成为预防及控制其传播的重要手段之一。Micro RNA(mi RNA)是一类长度仅有约22nt的非编码单链微小RNA,广泛存在于动植物真核细胞中,主要通过与靶m RNA分子的3'端非编码区域(3'-untranslated region,3'UTR)完全或不完全互补配对,调控该m RNA分子的表达或转录后翻译;在细胞生长、发育、凋亡,肿瘤形成,病毒感染等多种生理病理过程中起重要作用。在病毒感染时,mi RNA调控病毒与宿主之间的相互作用,影响病毒感染的进程与结局;感兴趣的是,mi RNA其自身的表达对病毒感染具有一定的特异性。因此,mi RNA有望成为筛查病毒传染性疾病的临床标志物,目前已成为一热点研究领域。本文主要从循环体液中mi RNA的稳定性,mi RNA在病毒感染中的特异性表达,以及mi RNA检测技术方面做简要综述,并对mi RNA作为传染病一种新型检测标志物的可行性进行了初步的分析。

Infectious diseases normally tend to have very strong infectivity, and be easy to widely spread in a large geographical area and difficult to control. Therefore, they cause serious harm to people＇s life and health. Rapid and accurate screening has become the urgent need for the prevention and control of their prevalence. Micro RNAs（mi RNAs） are a class of small noncoding RNAs（about 22 nucleotides, nt）, commonly found in eukaryotic cells. Mi RNAs play critical roles in a variety of physiological and pathological processes including cell growth, development and apoptosis, tumorigenesis and virus infection by regulating gene expression or post-transcriptional translation, which work by perfect or imperfect base pairing between short seed regions of mi RNAs and 3＇ UTR of target m RNAs. During virus infection, mi RNAs are documented to have crucial impact on the interaction between viruses and hosts. Interestingly, the specific expressions of mi RNAs make them expected to become clinical markers for screening virus infectious diseases, which are emerging as a hot research field. This paper summarizes the stability of mi RNAs in human body fluids, reviews the specificity of mi RNAs expression in virus infection and the methods of mi RNAs detection, and performs the feasibility analysis about mi RNA as a group of novel and potential biomarkers of virus-related infectious diseases.