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Enzyme-mediated damage repair or mitigation, while common for nucleic acids, is rare for proteins. Examples of protein damage are elimination of phosphorylated Ser/Thr to dehydroalanine/dehydrobutyrine (Dha/ Dhb) in pathogenesis and aging. Bacterial LanC enzymes use Dha/Dhb to form carbon-sulfur linkages in antimicrobial peptides, but the functions of eukaryotic LanC-like (LanCL) counterparts are unknown. We show that LanCLs catalyze the addition of glutathione to Dha/Dhb in proteins, driving irreversible C-glutathionylation. Chemo-enzymatic methods were developed to site-selectively incorporate Dha/Dhb at phospho-regulated sites in kinases. In human MAPK-MEK1, such ''elimination damage'' generated aberrantly activated kinases, which were deactivated by LanCL-mediated C-glutathionylation. Surveys of endogenous proteins bearing damage from elimination (the eliminylome) also suggest it is a source of electrophilic reactivity. LanCLs thus remove these reactive electrophiles and their potentially dysregulatory effects from the proteome. As knockout of LanCL in mice can result in premature death, repair of this kind of protein damage appears important physiologically. ll

Lanthionine synthetase C-like 2 (LanCL2) is a novel regulator of Akt, promoting maximum Akt activation and cell survival in liver cells. LanCL2 regulates Akt activation by directly facilitating mTORC2 phosphorylation of Akt.

INTRODUCTIONChronic hepatitis virus B or C infection results in damage to hepatocytes and may eventually lead to liver fibrosis, cirrhosis and/or hepatocellular carcinoma [1][2][3] . The diagnosis of liver fibrosis and cirrhosis in patients with chronic virus hepatitis is of therapeutic and prognostic importance.Although histologic examination of percutaneous biopsy specimens is the gold criterion for the severity of fibrosis and cirrhosis, biopsy is invasive and cannot be used repeatedly in follow-up. Moreover, liver biopsy can yield false negative results in nearly 20-30% of cases [4][5][6][7] . Therefore, it is important to use noninvasive methods in differentiation between liver fibrosis and cirrhosis.Ultrasonography (US) is a noninvasive and inexpensive procedure for diagnosis of focal and diffuse parenchymal disease of liver. Although US cannot detect minute changes, it can show liver cirrhosis in patients with decompensated liver function [8][9][10][11] . However, correlation between US and histologic diagnosis has not been fully investigated in large series of patients. We conducted a prospective study to evaluate the validity of US for diagnosis of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic liver hepatitis without clinical or biochemical evidence of cirrhosis. Abstract AIM: To evaluate the validity of ultrasonographic and pathologic diagnosis of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic viral hepatitis. MATERIALS AND METHODS Patients METHODS:The liver fibrosis status in 324 patients was evaluated by both needle biopsy and ultrasonography. Liver fibrosis was divided into S0 -S4 stages. S4 stage was designated as definite cirrhosis. The ultrasonographic examination included qualitative variables, description of liver surface and parenchyma, and quantitative parameters, such as diameter of vessels, blood flow velocity and spleen size.

Modern maize hybrids often contain biotech and native traits. To-date all biotech traits have been randomly inserted in the genome. Consequently, developing hybrids with multiple traits is expensive, time-consuming, and complex. Here we report using CRISPR-Cas9 to generate a complex trait locus (CTL) to facilitate trait stacking. A CTL consists of multiple preselected sites positioned within a small well-characterized chromosomal region where trait genes are inserted. We generated individual lines, each carrying a site-specific insertion landing pad (SSILP) that was targeted to a preselected site and capable of efficiently receiving a transgene via recombinase-mediated cassette exchange. The selected sites supported consistent transgene expression and the SSILP insertion had no effect on grain yield. We demonstrated that two traits residing at different sites within a CTL can be combined via genetic recombination. CTL technology is a major step forward in the development of multi-trait maize hybrids.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which has high incidence rates with rapid rate of transmission, is a pandemic that spread across the world, resulting in more than 3,000,000 deaths globally. Currently, several drugs have been used for the clinical treatment of COVID-19, such as antivirals (radecivir, baritinib), monoclonal antibodies (tocilizumab), and glucocorticoids (dexamethasone). Accumulating evidence indicates that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are essential regulators of virus infections and antiviral immune responses including biological processes that are involved in the regulation of COVID-19 and subsequent disease states. Upon viral infections, cellular lncRNAs directly regulate viral genes and influence viral replication and pathology through virus-mediated changes in the host transcriptome. Additionally, several host lncRNAs could help the occurrence of viral immune escape by inhibiting type I interferons (IFN-1), while others could up-regulate IFN-1 production to play an antiviral role. Consequently, understanding the expression and function of lncRNAs during severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection will provide insights into the development of lncRNA-based methods. In this review, we summarized the current findings of lncRNAs in the regulation of the strong inflammatory response, immune dysfunction and thrombosis induced by SARS-CoV-2 infection, discussed the underlying mechanisms, and highlighted the therapeutic challenges of COVID-19 treatment and its future research directions.