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Review
. 2022 Jul 15;10(1):50.
doi: 10.1186/s40364-022-00392-2.

Roles of circRNAs in hematological malignancies

Fahua Deng  1 , Chengsi Zhang  1 , Tingting Lu  1   2 , Ezhong Joshua Liao  2   3 , Hai Huang  4   5 , Sixi Wei  6   7
Affiliations
Review

Roles of circRNAs in hematological malignancies

Fahua Deng et al. Biomark Res. .

Abstract

As one of the leading causes of death, hematologic malignancies are associated with an ever-increasing incidence, and drug resistance and relapse of patients after treatment represent clinical challenges. Therefore, there are pressing demands to uncover biomarkers to indicate the development, progression, and therapeutic targets for hematologic malignancies. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are covalently closed circular-single-stranded RNAs whose biosynthesis is regulated by various factors and is widely-expressed and evolutionarily conserved in many organisms and expressed in a tissue-/cell-specific manner. Recent reports have indicated that circRNAs plays an essential role in the progression of hematological malignancies. However, circRNAs are difficult to detect with low abundance using conventional techniques. We need to learn more information about their features to develop new detection methods. Herein, we sought to retrospect the current knowledge about the characteristics of circRNAs and summarized research on circRNAs in hematological malignancies to explore a potential direction.

Keywords: Hematological malignancies; Non-coding RNAs; circRNA functions; circRNAs.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Biosynthesis of circRNAs. CircRNAs can be directly generated by back-splicing; Intron-driven circularization can be inhibited by RNA helicase DHX9; Lariat-driven circularization generates a lariat structure. Spliceosome can splice to generate circRNAs and lariat-introns RNAs. Lariat-introns RNAs can be degraded, but some lariat-introns RNAs can escape degradation to form ciRNAs
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Characteristics of circRNAs. A CircRNAs are widely expressed in various organisms; B CircRNAs are expressed in a tissue-specific manner; C. CircRNAs with high stability can resist degradation from the exonuclease
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Functions of circRNAs. CircRNAs can maintain R-loop structure to facilitate mRNA transcription and indirectly regulate mRNA transcription by recruiting proteins or acting as ceRNA to compete with mRNA. Besides, circRNAs act as a protein scaffold to mediate protein-protein interactions, protein localization, and protein transport. Moreover, circRNAs code proteins and regulate nearby cells by exosome transport
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
CircRNA in the hematological system. A The expression of circRNAs was positively correlated with cell differentiation during erythrocyte differentiation; B CircRNAs play functions in hematological tumors; C Chromosomal translocation derived f-circRNA, which could translate fusion proteins to promote leukemia
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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