miRNA在肝脏脂代谢和脂代谢紊乱性疾病中的作用

Functions of miRNA in Liver Lipid Metabolism and Lipid Metabolic Disorders

肝脏是调控机体脂代谢的主要器官之一,生物体内的脂代谢紊乱会导致多种代谢性疾病的发生,比如脂肪肝、肥胖和高脂血症等。MicroRNA(miRNA)是近年来发现的一类内源性非编码单链小分子RNA,能通过碱基互补配对在转录后水平调控各种生物过程中的基因表达。越来越多的研究发现肝脏脂质代谢紊乱往往伴随着miRNA的异常表达,一些miRNA已被证实为脂质代谢的调节因子。深入了解和研究mi RNA在肝脏脂代谢和代谢紊乱性疾病中的作用和机制,对于寻找治疗代谢性疾病的有效靶点以及预防方法具有现实意义。对调节脂代谢和代谢紊乱性疾病的一些关键miRNA的最新研究进展进行综述,主要关注miRNA在调控高密度脂蛋白、低密度脂蛋白、极低密度脂蛋白代谢中的作用。

Liver is one of the main organs that regulate the body′s lipid metabolism, abnormal lipid me-tabolism may cause multiple metabolic associated disorders including fatty liver, obesity and hyperlipid-emia. Micro RNA（miRNA） is a kind of small non-coding RNA molecules, and it may be complementaryto target mRNA and regulates gene expression on post-transcriptional level. More and more researchesshow that liver lipid metabolic disorder is often accompanied by abnormal expression of miRNA, a num-ber of miRNAs have been identified as important regulators of lipid metabolism. Further understandingand studying the mechanism of miRNA in liver lipid metabolism and metabolic disorders are of great sig-nificance for finding effective targets and preventive methods for metabolic diseases. In this review, thewriter focused on the most recent findings in the field of miRNAs in hepatic lipid metabolism, and high-lighted the contribution of miRNAs in regulating metabolism of high-density lipoprotein（HDL）, low-density lipoprotein（LDL） and very low-density lipoprotein（VLDL）.