The body hides its own RNA from the immune system with sugar

To our immune system, naked RNA is a sign of a viral or bacterial invasion and must be attacked. But our own cells also have RNA. To push back the troubles, our cells go their RNA in sugars, Vijay Rathinam and her colleagues at the Uconn and Ryan Flynn Medicine School at the Boston Children’s Hospital Report in Nature.

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a family of large fundamental biological molecules for all forms of life, including viruses, bacteria and animals. Viruses as diverse as measles, flu, SARS-COV-2 and rage all have RNA, which is why the immune system begins to attack when it sees RNA in blood circulation or in other inappropriate places. But our own cells also have RNA, sometimes displaying it on their surface, clear so that ititine immune cells can see – and yet the immune system ignores it.

“RNA recognition as a sign of infection is problematic, because each cell of our body has RNA,” said the immunologist of the Uconn School of Medicine, Vijay Rathinam. Is the question how our immune system distinguishes our own RNA from that of dangerous invaders?

Previous research carried out by the Boston Children’s Hospital and researchers from the University of Stanford, Ryan Flynn and Carolyn Bertozzi, had noticed that our body adds sugars to RNA. These sugar RNA (also known as glycosylated RNA, or glycorns) are displayed on the surface of cells and do not seem to cause the immune system.

Rathinam and her colleagues wondered if the sugar was somehow protected the glycorns of the immune system. This could be a strategy that the body uses to prevent our own RNA from provoking inflammation.

When Vincent Graziano, a doctorate. The student of the Rathinam laboratory and the main author on paper, took glycorna of human cell cultures and blood, cut sugars and reintroduced it into cells, immune cells attacked it. Immune cells had ignored the same RNA when it was sugar factor.

“Sugar hides our own RNA from the immune system,” explains Rathinam.

It is particularly important for our body because cells are often covered by glycornas. When cells die and are cleaned by the immune system, RNA sugar sugar prevents dead cells from unnecessarily stimulating inflammation.

The results could help when reflecting on autoimmune diseases. Certain autoimmune diseases, such as lupus, are associated with specific RNA and dead cells that trigger the immune system.

Now that scientists include the role of RNA glycosylation in the diversion of attention from the immune system, they can verify whether this strategy is sort of pain and, in the affirmative, how it could be corrected.