The biogenesis and emerging roles of circular RNAs

Ling-Ling Chen from the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences reviews the field of circular RNAs

Abstract: Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are produced from precursor mRNA (pre-mRNA) back-splicing of thousands of genes in eukaryotes. Although circRNAs are generally expressed at low levels, recent findings have shed new light on their cell type-specific and tissue-specific expression and on the regulation of their biogenesis. Furthermore, the data indicate that circRNAs shape gene expression by titrating microRNAs, regulating transcription and interfering with splicing, thus effectively expanding the diversity and complexity of eukaryotic transcriptomes.

Chen, Ling-Ling. "The biogenesis and emerging roles of circular RNAs."Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology (2016).

Comparison of circular RNA prediction tools

Hansen and colleagues at the Aarhus University in Denmark compares five popular algorithms for the prediction of circular RNA candidates. The authors compare circRNA_finder, find_circ, CIRCexplorer, CIRI, and MapSplice and evaluate the false positive rate. Analysis concludes the utility of using multiple tools to reduce the false positivity.

Hansen et al,
Nucl. Acids Res. (07 April 2016) 44(6): e58.doi: 10.1093/nar/gkv1458

First published online: December 10, 2015