Advances in the Identification of Circular RNAs and Research Into CircRNAs in Human Diseases

Overview

Journal Front Genet

Date 2021 Apr 5

PMID 33815488

Citations 22

Authors

Shihu Jiao

Song Wu

Shan Huang

Mingyang Liu

Bo Gao

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a class of endogenous non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) with a closed-loop structure that are mainly produced by variable processing of precursor mRNAs (pre-mRNAs). They are widely present in all eukaryotes and are very stable. Currently, circRNA studies have become a hotspot in RNA research. It has been reported that circRNAs constitute a significant proportion of transcript expression, and some are significantly more abundantly expressed than other transcripts. CircRNAs have regulatory roles in gene expression and critical biological functions in the development of organisms, such as acting as microRNA sponges or as endogenous RNAs and biomarkers. As such, they may have useful functions in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. CircRNAs have been found to play an important role in the development of several diseases, including atherosclerosis, neurological disorders, diabetes, and cancer. In this paper, we review the status of circRNA research, describe circRNA-related databases and the identification of circRNAs, discuss the role of circRNAs in human diseases such as colon cancer, atherosclerosis, and gastric cancer, and identify remaining research questions related to circRNAs.

Citing Articles

Evaluation of circ_0002232 and circ-vimentin gene expressions as valuable biomarkers in acute myeloid leukemia patients.

Ibrahem S, Ahmed E, Shafik E, Hetta H, Bakry R Mol Biol Rep. 2025; 52(1):105.

PMID: 39776264 DOI: 10.1007/s11033-024-10113-7.

Investigating the biomarker value of circRNAs in the diagnosis of colorectal cancer: a systematic review.

Latifi-Pakdehi T, Khezrian A, Doosti-Irani A, Afshar S, Mahdavinezhad A Discov Oncol. 2024; 15(1):734.

PMID: 39616555 PMC: 11609141. DOI: 10.1007/s12672-024-01602-z.

CircSI-SSL: circRNA-binding site identification based on self-supervised learning.

Cao C, Wang C, Yang S, Zou Q Bioinformatics. 2024; 40(1).

PMID: 38180876 PMC: 10789309. DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btae004.

The Role of Non-Coding RNAs in Myelodysplastic Neoplasms.

Georgoulis V, Koumpis E, Hatzimichael E Cancers (Basel). 2023; 15(19).

PMID: 37835504 PMC: 10571949. DOI: 10.3390/cancers15194810.

iCircDA-NEAE: Accelerated attribute network embedding and dynamic convolutional autoencoder for circRNA-disease associations prediction.

Yuan L, Zhao J, Shen Z, Zhang Q, Geng Y, Zheng C PLoS Comput Biol. 2023; 19(8):e1011344.

PMID: 37651321 PMC: 10470932. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011344.

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