What are the chemical components of Chinese medicine that enter the body after decoction? After research, Shen Chaobin’s group, a pediatrician at the Hospital of Integrative Medicine affiliated with Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, found that a large number of small RNA molecules still exist in the decocted Chinese medicine, and that these tiny RNAs play an important role in gene regulation, which can provide a theoretical basis for traditional Chinese medicine to cure diseases, and can even confirm the ancient Chinese saying “eat what you can make up for. “On October 27, Shen Zhaobin’s group announced the results to the media, more than 700 years of ancient remedies why useful? ”A good study of the classical scripture formula of Yu Ping Feng San, a formula that has been used in China for more than 700 years, has good clinical efficacy for recurrent respiratory infections in children and excessive sweating and night sweating in children, but as modern medicine, we hope to use scientific means to make the immune mechanism clear.” Shen Chaobin told the surging news (www.thepaper.cn) reporter that 20 years ago, China’s leading pediatric immunologist Professor Ying Daming once suggested such a study to him. There has been a heated debate over the years about how Chinese medicines work, and there was also a debate more than three years ago between Shen Chaobin and Yu Pui-chung, a professor in the Department of Natural Medicinal Chemistry at Fudan University’s School of Pharmacy. Yu Pui-chung believes that the most likely pharmacological and medicinal effects of Chinese herbs after concoction and decoction are chemical components, while Shen Chaobin does not agree with this and believes that the existence of “small genetic material” in Chinese herbs after treatment cannot be ruled out. The “small genetic material” that Shen Chaobin refers to is micro-ribonucleic acid, which is a “small gene” sequence that regulates gene expression, and its main function is to resist gene transcription. In the medical sense, microRNA is both a biomarker of disease and a means of gene therapy. In 2012, Professor Chen-Yu Zhang and his team at Nanjing University published a paper on small RNAs (miRNAs) in Cell Research (22(1), 2012), in which certain microRNAs (miRNAs) in plants can enter the human bloodstream and tissues and organs through daily food intake, and then affect the expression of target genes in the body by regulating their expression. In other words, the microRNAs from plant cells can be used to regulate the physiological functions of the body. In other words, the discovery that substances from plant cells are influencing and even regulating the physiological functions of animals across borders was once hotly debated in the international scientific community, and there are still many different opinions. After the decoction of Chinese medicine, there are still a large number of “small genes” In the debate between Shen Chaobin and Yu Pui-chung, Zhang Dongqing, a professor at the Immunology Research Department of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, acted as a “peacemaker”: “You each study from different research directions and see the results. Look at the results.” Eventually, the two cooperated, with Yu Pui-chung providing the experimental site for drug extraction and the animal laboratory, and Shen Chaobin coming up with the results of the small DNA extraction and isolation of the Yu Pingfeng formula, and Yu Pui-chung extracting the special active chemical components from the formula. Shen Chaobin said, considering that Chinese herbal medicine is a unique genetic resource in China, there is always a defect of “unclear and unexplained” in understanding the principle of Chinese herbal medicine to cure diseases, so the subject focused on whether there is a connection between Chinese herbal medicine to cure diseases and regulation of genes. After several animal experiments, we found that Yu Ping Feng San does have the effect of regulating the expression of immune-related genes. The group further explored the small gene expression of each herb in Yu Ping Feng San, and found that after the herbs were decocted, a large number of “small genes” still existed. Shen Zaobin called them “gene therapy” that can be drunk, which he said provides a theoretical basis for traditional Chinese medicine to cure diseases and proves that Yu Ping Feng San is a unique immunomodulator. ”Sun-dried herbs look like the mummies of plants, and it is indeed hard to imagine that there are still active ingredients in them.” Shen Chaobin said this is the most realistic hint of how Chinese herbs actually enter the body after decoction and are absorbed and utilized by the body as a research method, explaining that DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and RNA (ribonucleic acid) are the material basis of genes, such as egg yolk (DNA) and egg white (RNA), which enter the body and can be digested and decomposed and absorbed, but tiny ribonucleic acid enters the body without being digested In most cases, they are small molecules that can be absorbed directly, and therefore hold promise as a natural treatment for altering gene expression in disease. ”The DNA and RNA of eggs cannot be used, and can only provide nutrition to people, it is impossible to change the expression of human genes, but the main role of microRNA is mostly to resist the expression of genes, a simple understanding should be the ‘switch’ in the ‘off’ of genes. ‘” Shen Chaobin said. ”There has always been a saying in ancient China, called eat what we eat to make up for what we eat, and the same saying in the West is what the 19th century German philosopher Feuerbach said, ‘We are what we eat’.” Shen Chaobin said that the research results of himself and Professor Zhang Chenyu may provide a scientific interpretation of this simple materialistic philosophy. The results of this research by Shen Chaobin’s group will be published in the Journal of Chinese Herbal Medicine, which is currently ranked first in the category of Traditional Chinese Medicine in the Citation Report of Chinese Scientific and Technical Journals.