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Review
. 2019 Jan 5;4(1):23-29.
doi: 10.1016/j.ncrna.2019.01.001. eCollection 2019 Mar.

Circular RNA expression and function in the brain

Shobana Sekar  1 , Winnie S Liang  1
Affiliations
Review

Circular RNA expression and function in the brain

Shobana Sekar et al. Noncoding RNA Res. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Within the last decade, active research on circular RNAs (circRNAs) has dramatically improved our understanding of the expression and function of these non-coding RNAs. While several mechanisms for circRNA function have been proposed, including sequestration of microRNAs and regulation of cellular proteins, studies provide evidence that circRNAs can regulate transcription and may also serve as biomarkers. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the brain, and the dynamic transcriptional mechanisms that support neurobiological pathways, the influence of circRNAs is potentially extensive. Understanding how circRNAs contribute to key neurological pathways will fill gaps in our understanding of brain function and provide valuable insight into novel therapeutic approaches to treat neurological diseases. Here, we review recent research on circRNA expression in the brain, describe the proposed functions of circRNAs, and evaluate the role of circRNAs in neurological diseases.

Keywords: Brain; Neurological disease; Non-coding RNA; PSD, post-synaptic density; Transcriptional regulation; circRNA; microRNA.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
CircRNA expression in adult human brain tissue. Left plot: total number of circRNAs detected that demonstrated greater expression than their mRNA counterparts (>50% reads supporting circRNAs, P < 0.05) [25]. Right plot: total number of circRNAs detected. Data for the cerebellum were derived from two studies, and the median number of circRNAs is shown. *For the posterior cingulate (PC), the number of circRNAs identified in astrocytes is shown [32]. Evaluation of the number of circRNAs with greater expression than their mRNA counterparts was not performed for the PC data set. Diencephalon (DE) [12,13,25]; cerebellum (CB) [13,25]; temporal lobe (TL) [13,25]; occipital lobe (OL) [13,25]; parietal lobe (PL) [13,25]; frontal cortex (FC) [13,25].
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
CircRNA expression in adult human non-brain tissues. Shown are the total numbers of circRNAs reported for each tissue using data from the indicated studies [12,19,26,43,44].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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