Ilieva Mirolyuba, Uchida Shizuka
Center for RNA Medicine, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aalborg University, DK-2450 Copenhagen SV, Denmark.
Noncoding RNA. 2022 Jul 15;8(4):53. doi: 10.3390/ncrna8040053.
The cardiopulmonary system delivers oxygen throughout the body via blood circulation. It is an essential part of the body to sustain the lives of organisms. The integral parts of the cardiopulmonary system-the heart and lungs-are constantly exposed to damaging agents (e.g., dust, viruses), and can be greatly affected by injuries caused by dysfunction in tissues (e.g., myocardial infarction). When damaged, mesenchymal cells, such as fibroblasts, are activated to become myofibroblasts to initiate fibrosis as part of a regenerative mechanism. In diseased states, the excess accumulation of extracellular matrices secreted by myofibroblasts results in further dysfunction in the damaged organs. These fibrotic tissues cannot easily be removed. Thus, there is a growing interest in understanding the fibrotic process, as well as finding biomolecules that can be targets for slowing down or potentially stopping fibrosis. Among these biomolecules, the interest in studying long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs; any non-protein-coding RNAs longer than 200 nucleotides) has intensified in recent years. In this commentary, we summarize the current status of lncRNA research in the cardiopulmonary system by focusing on cardiac and pulmonary fibrosis.
心肺系统通过血液循环将氧气输送到全身。它是维持生物体生命的身体重要组成部分。心肺系统的组成部分——心脏和肺——不断暴露于损伤因子（如灰尘、病毒），并且会受到组织功能障碍（如心肌梗死）所导致损伤的极大影响。受损时，间充质细胞，如成纤维细胞，会被激活成为肌成纤维细胞，从而启动纤维化，作为再生机制的一部分。在疾病状态下，肌成纤维细胞分泌的细胞外基质过度积累会导致受损器官进一步功能障碍。这些纤维化组织不易清除。因此，人们越来越有兴趣了解纤维化过程，以及寻找可作为减缓或潜在阻止纤维化靶点的生物分子。在这些生物分子中，近年来对研究长链非编码RNA（lncRNA；任何长度超过200个核苷酸的非蛋白质编码RNA）的兴趣日益浓厚。在这篇评论中，我们通过关注心脏和肺纤维化来总结lncRNA在心肺系统研究中的现状。
