Narrow Results

Hantavirus outbreaks in the American Southwest are hypothesized to be driven by episodic seasonal events of high precipitation, promoting rapid increases in virus-reservoir rodent species that then move across the landscape from high quality montane forested habitats (refugia), eventually over-running human residences and increasing disease risk. In this study, the velocities of rodents and virus diffusion wave propagation and retraction were documented and quantified in the sky-islands of northern New Mexico and related to rodent-virus relationships in refugia versus nonrefugia habitats. Deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) refugia populations exhibited higher Sin Nombre Virus (SNV) infection prevalence than nonrefugia populations. The velocity of propagating diffusion waves of Peromyscus from montane to lower grassland habitats was measured at $24.6\pm 5.6$ m/day (SE), with wave retraction velocities of $28\pm 8.4$ m/day. SNV infection diffusion wave propagation velocity within a deer mouse population averaged $27.5\pm 7.8$ m/day, with a faster retraction wave velocity of $161.5\pm 80.7$ m/day. A spatio-temporal analysis of human Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) cases during the initial 1993 epidemic revealed a positive linear relationship between the time during the epidemic and the distance of human cases from the nearest deer mouse refugium, with a landscape diffusion wave velocity of $19.6\pm 1.0$ m/day ($r^2=0.96$). These consistent diffusion propagation wave velocity results support the traveling wave component of the HPS outbreak theory and can provide information on space–time constraints for future outbreak forecasts.

Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) is a new class of endogenous molecules identified in recent years. Studies on the cancer transcriptome have identified a number of lncRNAs with distinct expression patterns in different types of cancer, indicating that this populous group of molecules can modulate cancer progression. In addition, advances in revealing the molecular principles of cancer-associated lncRNAs made them amenable for therapeutic intervention. Although more than 50,000 lncRNAs have been identified, their functions in cellular homeostasis and pathophysiological processes remain largely uncharacterized. In this review, we summarize cancer-related lncRNAs that have been identified in recent years and discuss their mechanistic roles as oncogenes or tumor suppressors. These findings provide insights into clinical application of lncRNAs as biomarkers or therapeutic targets.

Numerous crosstalk interactions between RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) and microRNAs (miRNAs) have been recently reported, unveiling the complexity and importance of gene expression modulation in health and disease. They control physiological processes such as stem cell maintenance, neuronal development or energetic metabolism, but are also responsible for pathological conditions, such as muscle waste and dystrophies, atherosclerosis, obesity and cancer. MiRNAs and RBPs are two of the well-studied post-transcriptional regulators and they may even reciprocally regulate themselves. MiRNAs can act on RBPs expression while RBPs modulate miRNA biogenesis, function and degradation. RBPs and miRNAs modulate mRNA expression at different levels, affecting their stability, splicing and translation efficiency through either competition for overlapping binding or modulation of mRNA structure by binding, but several other forms of interaction have been described. In this review, we will address the current bibliography regarding miRNA:RBP interactions and crosstalk events as well as their implications in health and disease.