Long RNA-Mediated Chromatin Regulation in Fission Yeast and Mammals

As part of a complex network of genome control, long regulatory RNAs exert significant influences on chromatin dynamics. Understanding how this occurs could illuminate new avenues for disease treatment and lead to new hypotheses that would advance gene regulatory research. Recent studies using the model fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe (S. pombe) and powerful parallel sequencing technologies have provided many insights in this area. This review will give an overview of key findings in S. pombe that relate long RNAs to multiple levels of chromatin regulation: histone modifications, gene neighborhood regulation in cis and higher-order chromosomal ordering. Moreover, we discuss parallels recently found in mammals to help bridge the knowledge gap between the study systems.

Therapeutic Opportunities of GPBAR1 in Cholestatic Diseases

GPBAR1, a transmembrane G protein-coupled receptor for bile acids, is widely expressed in multiple tissues in humans and rodents. In recent years, GPBAR1 has been thought to play an important role in bile homeostasis, metabolism and inflammation. This review specifically focuses on the function of GPBAR1 in cholestatic liver disease and summarizes the various pathways through which GPBAR1 acts in cholestatic models. GPBAR1 mainly regulates cholestasis in a holistic system of liver-gallbladder-gut formation. In the state of cholestasis, the activation of GPBAR1 could regulate liver inflammation, induce cholangiocyte regeneration to maintain the integrity of the biliary tree, control the hydrophobicity of the bile acid pool and promote the secretion of bile HCO3−. All these functions of GPBAR1 might be clear ways to protect against cholestatic diseases and liver injury. However, the characteristic of GPBAR1-mediated proliferation increases the risk of proliferation of cholangiocarcinoma in malignant transformed cholangiocytes. This dichotomous function of GPBAR1 limits its use in cholestasis. During disease treatment, simultaneous activation of GPBAR1 and FXR receptors often results in improved outcomes, and this strategy may become a crucial direction in the development of bile acid-activated receptors in the future.

MicrogliaST: a web server for microglia spatiotemportal pattern analysis in normal and disordered brains

Brain is the most complex organ of living organisms, as the celebrated cells in the brain, microglia play an indispensable role in the brain's immune microenvironment. Microglia have critical roles not only in neural development and homeostasis, but also in neurodegenerative diseases and malignant of the central nervous system. However, little is known about the dynamic characteristics of microglia during development or disease conditions. Recently, the single-cell RNA sequencing technologies have become possible to characterize the heterogeneity of immune system in brain. But it posed computational challenges on integrating and utilizing the massive published datasets to dissect the spatiotemporal characterization of microglia. Here, we present microgliaST (bio-bigdata.hrbmu.edu.cn/MST), a database consisting of single-cell microglia transcriptomes across multiple brain regions and developmental periods. Based on high-quality microglia markers collected from published papers, we annotated and constructed human and mouse transcriptomic profiles of 273,374 microglias, comprising 12 regions, 12 periods and 3 conditions (normal, disease, treatment). In addition, MicrogliaST provides multiple analytical tools to elucidate the landscape of microglia under disorder conditions, conduct personalized difference analysis and spatiotemporal dynamic analysis. More importantly, microgliaST paves an ingenious way to the study of brain environment, and also provides insights into clinical therapy assessments.

Insights Into the Changing Landscape of Coronavirus Disease 2019

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a highly contagious, infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which emerged in late 2019 in Wuhan China. A year after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, over 215 million confirmed cases and approximately 5 million deaths have been reported worldwide. In this multidisciplinary review, we summarize important insights for COVID-19, ranging from its origin, pathology, epidemiology, to clinical manifestations and treatment. More importantly, we also highlight the foundational connection between genetics and the development of personalized medicine and how these aspects have an impact on disease treatment and management in the dynamic landscape of this pandemic.

Features of clinical symptom and inflammatory marker regression in the use of thermal oxygen-helium mixture in SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia treatment

New coronavirus infection is accompanied by high mortality and socio-economic losses in the world community. Despite the continuous process of including new medication with antiviral and anti-inflammatory effects in the disease treatment, the development of complications, primarily of hypoxic origin, and mortality remain high.The aim of the study is to evaluate the effect of the use of thermal oxygen-helium mixture in the therapy on the rate of regression of clinical and laboratory signs of inflammation, as well as the length of patient hospital stay.Material and methods. 59 patient medical records with moderate and severe disease were analyzed. The article summarizes experience of patient management with COVID-19-associated pneumonia who are treated with or without the use of thermal oxygen-helium mixture in one of intensive care units in multi-filed hospital.Results and discussion. It has been proven that the use of a thermal oxygen-helium mixture in the SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia treatment is effective.

A Comprehensive Review of the Therapeutic Value of Urine-Derived Stem Cells

Stem cells possess regenerative powers and multidirectional differentiation potential and play an important role in disease treatment and basic medical research. Urine-derived stem cells (USCs) represent a newly discovered type of stem cell with biological characteristics similar to those of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs), including their doubling time and immunophenotype. USCs are noninvasive and can be readily obtained from voided urine and steadily cultured. Based on advances in this field, USCs and their secretions have increasingly emerged as ideal sources. USCs may play regulatory roles in the cellular immune system, oxidative stress, revascularization, apoptosis and autophagy. This review summarizes the applications of USCs in tissue regeneration and various disease treatments. Furthermore, by analysing their limitations, we anticipate the development of more feasible therapeutic strategies to promote USC-based individualized treatment.

Open Problems in Extracellular RNA Data Analysis: Insights From an ERCC Online Workshop

We now know RNA can survive the harsh environment of biofluids when encapsulated in vesicles or by associating with lipoproteins or RNA binding proteins. These extracellular RNA (exRNA) play a role in intercellular signaling, serve as biomarkers of disease, and form the basis of new strategies for disease treatment. The Extracellular RNA Communication Consortium (ERCC) hosted a two-day online workshop (April 19–20, 2021) on the unique challenges of exRNA data analysis. The goal was to foster an open dialog about best practices and discuss open problems in the field, focusing initially on small exRNA sequencing data. Video recordings of workshop presentations and discussions are available (https://exRNA.org/exRNAdata2021-videos/). There were three target audiences: experimentalists who generate exRNA sequencing data, computational and data scientists who work with those groups to analyze their data, and experimental and data scientists new to the field. Here we summarize issues explored during the workshop, including progress on an effort to develop an exRNA data analysis challenge to engage the community in solving some of these open problems.