Project description:Recently, it has been demonstrated that genomes of many species express single stranded RNAs with covalently closed ends, named circular RNAs. Their regulatory potential and functional relevance are just starting to be revealed. Here we present a novel computational tool, seekCRIT (seek for differentially expressed Circular RNAs In Transcriptome), that identifies circular RNAs and detects their differential expression between two conditions. Using seekCRIT we identified the circular RNAs that are expressed in the neural retina and determined that the majority of them (74%) are expressed in both, ischemic and normal conditions. We identified over 40 circular RNAs that were differentially expressed between both conditions and validated these experimentally using qRT-PCR. The high validation rate of 90% with a false discovery rate (FDR) of < 5% demonstrates the accuracy and reliability of seekCRIT.
Project description:We identified the differentially expressed circular RNAs in vitiligo patients before and after treatment of methylprednisolone. We have completed the Arraystar Human circRNA Array V2 analysis of the 8 peripheral blood specimens. Whole blood samples (3 mL each) were collected by venipuncture into heparinized vacutainers from a total of four patients diagnosed with nonsegmental vitiligo before and after systemic glucocorticoid therapy (oral methylprednisolone tablets, 12mg daily for eight weeks).
Project description:Conversely to canonical splicing, back-splicing covalently ligates the upstream 3' splice site (SS) with downstream 5'SS and generates exonic circular RNAs (circRNAs) that are widely-identified in eukaryotes and have regulatory functions in gene expression. However, sex-specific back-splicing in Drosophila has not been investigated and its regulation remains unclear. Here, we performed multiple RNA-seq of various sex-specific Drosophila samples including head, body and gonads from both genders, and identified more than ten thousand of circular RNAs, in which hundreds are sex-differentially expressed and back-spliced. Intriguingly, we found that expression of SXL, an RNA-binding protein encoded by Sex-lethal (Sxl), the master Drosophila sex-determination gene which only functionally spliced in females, promotes back-splicing of many female-differentially expressed circRNAs in the male S2 cells, while expression of a SXL mutant did not. Using a monoclonal antibody, we further obtained the transcriptome-wide RNA-binding sites of SXL through a PAR-CLIP approach and revealed that SXL-binding on flanking exons and introns of pre-mRNAs facilitates back-splicing of those circRNAs, whereas SXL-binding on the circRNA exons inhibits the back-splicing. This study provides strong evidence that SXL has a regulatory role in back-splicing to generate sex-specifc circRNAs, as well as in the initiation of Drosophila sex-determination cascade through canoncial forward-splicing.