targeting viral infection by microrna inhibition针对由微rna抑制病毒感染.pdfVIP

Roberts and Jopling Genome Biology 2010, 11:201 /2010/11/1/201 M I N I R E V I E W Targeting viral infection by microRNA inhibition Ashley PE Roberts and Catherine L Jopling* in a minority of cases. Chronically infected individuals Abstract may then develop cirrhosis of the liver and may ultimately An inhibitor of microRNA-122 reduces viral load progress to hepatocellular carcinoma. HCV is predomi- in chimpanzees that are chronically infected with nantly spread through direct blood contact, although hepatitis C virus, suggesting that such an approach there is some evidence to suggest a possible (minor) might have therapeutic potential in humans. route of sexual transmission [3]. A report recently pub- lished in Science [4] shows that inhibiting a specifi c miRNA in chimpanzees chronically infected with HCV Hepatitis C virus and microRNAs reduces viral load. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are gaining an increasingly HCV has a single-stranded positive-sense RNA genome promi nent role as regulators of numerous cellular pro- that encodes a single polyprotein that is processed to ten cesses, including virus-host interactions. h ey are short viral proteins (Figure 1). h e single open reading frame is (21-23 nucleotide) non-coding regulatory RNAs that fl anked by two structured UTRs that are require