Objective:To identify key genes and their potential biological mechanisms in the progression of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) using bioinformatics technology.Methods:Genes differentially expressed in simple non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFL) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) were analyzed by integrating NAFLD-related sequencing datasets GSE135251 and GSE167523 from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) datebase. Gene Ontology (GO) functional enrichment analysis, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and Reactome signaling pathway analysis were performed. Key genes were identified by STRING database and Cytoscape3.7.2 software, and the expression of key genes under different fibrosis grades and activity scores was observed. In addition, the expression of key genes in different cell clusters was observed based on the single-cell RNA-seq dataset of NAFLD mice.Results:Bioinformatics methods were used to obtain 97 common differential genes in NAFLD from two datasets. GO functional enrichment analysis was mainly performed in Extracellular Matrix (ECM) tissues. The main signaling pathway is ECM-receptor interaction. Five key genes were identified based on PPI network and Cytoscape software: COL1A1, THBS2, CXCL8, THY1 and LOXL1. The expression of key genes was significantly positively correlated with fibrosis grade and activity score, indicating that they were closely related to the progression of NAFLD. These key genes are highly expressed in hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) and natural killer/T cells (NK/T cells).Conclusion:In this study, bioinformatics technology was used to identify five key genes that may be involved in the NAFL-NASH transformation, suggesting that the ECM-receptor interaction signaling pathway may be a key molecular mechanism of NAFLD disease progression.

Objective: To understand the internship of students majoring in preventive medicine in 6 colleges and universities in China, and provide reference suggestions for the improvement of internship arrangement. Methods: By using the method of combined clustering and convenient sampling, the fifth grades students majoring in preventive medicine in six universities in the eastern, central and western China were surveyed by using questionnaires to collect the information of their attitudes (to) and suggestions for clinical and public health internships. Results: A total of 596 students were surveyed. In terms of the benefits of clinical internship and public health internship, students who thought that the internship was fruitful accounted for >88%, and more students thought that reform is needed in clinical internship compared with public health internship. In clinical internship, the students through that the time arrangement was not appropriate enough (95, 39.58%), the content should be more detailed and in-depth (73, 30.42%) and the content did not conform to the professional direction (54, 22.50%). In public health internship, the students thought that the time arrangement was not appropriate (77, 45.56%), the content should be more detailed and standardized (65, 38.46%) and the types of internship bases should be more diversified (20, 11.83%). Conclusions The undergraduates majoring in preventive medicine felt to be benefited from clinical practice and public health internships and thought they are of necessity. At the same time, there are still many problems which needs to be improved in the two types of internships. It is necessary to make joint efforts from students, teachers, colleges and practice bases to promote the continuous improvement of undergraduate internship.