Have you ever noticed how many women have autoimmune diseases?
This bias is most pronounced in Sjogren's Syndrome, where the female:male prevalence reaches 20:1!
XIST is a long noncoding RNA best known for mediating the process of X inactivation in female cells.
We are interested in additional roles for XIST in the innate immune system, which would help explain 1) the marked female>male prevalence of rheumatic diseases 2) the upregulation of interferon in these diseases 3) more pronounced anti-vaccine and anti-viral responses in healthy women compared to men.
This work stems from the identification of XIST as a source of TLR7 ligands.
This bias is most pronounced in Sjogren's Syndrome, where the female:male prevalence reaches 20:1!
XIST is a long noncoding RNA best known for mediating the process of X inactivation in female cells.
We are interested in additional roles for XIST in the innate immune system, which would help explain 1) the marked female>male prevalence of rheumatic diseases 2) the upregulation of interferon in these diseases 3) more pronounced anti-vaccine and anti-viral responses in healthy women compared to men.
This work stems from the identification of XIST as a source of TLR7 ligands.
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Image by Mekha Thomas PhD