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Review
. 2022 Nov 18;20(1):533.
doi: 10.1186/s12967-022-03725-9.

Circular RNAs in organ injury: recent development

Ryan Wong #  1 , Yiwen Zhang #  1   2 , Hailin Zhao  3 , Daqing Ma  4
Affiliations
Review

Circular RNAs in organ injury: recent development

Ryan Wong et al. J Transl Med. .

Abstract

Circular ribonucleic acids (circRNAs) are a class of long non-coding RNA that were once regarded as non-functional transcription byproducts. However, recent studies suggested that circRNAs may exhibit important regulatory roles in many critical biological pathways and disease pathologies. These studies have identified significantly differential expression profiles of circRNAs upon changes in physiological and pathological conditions of eukaryotic cells. Importantly, a substantial number of studies have suggested that circRNAs may play critical roles in organ injuries. This review aims to provide a summary of recent studies on circRNAs in organ injuries with respect to (1) changes in circRNAs expression patterns, (2) main mechanism axi(e)s, (3) therapeutic implications and (4) future study prospective. With the increasing attention to this research area and the advancement in high-throughput nucleic acid sequencing techniques, our knowledge of circRNAs may bring fruitful outcomes from basic and clinical research.

Keywords: Gene expression regulation; Organ injury; circRNA; miRNA sponge.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Schematic illustration of three biosynthesis pathways of circular RNA. Messenger RNA can be spliced through canonical splicing to produced mature mRNA and non-canonical splicing to produce circular RNAs. There are three back splicing models in non-canonical splicing that produced three types of circular RNAs. a The intron-pairing circularisation that produces all three types of circular RNAs: circular intronic RNAs (ciRNAs), exon–intron circular RNAs (EIciRNAs), and exonic circular RNAs (ecircRNAs). b The lariat driven circularisation that produces two types of circular RNAs: EIicRNAs, ecircRNAs. c The RNA binding protein mediated circularisation that produces two types of circular RNAs: EIicRNAs, ecircRNAs. Of which, ciRNAs are derived from introns and localise within the nucleus; EIciRNAs are derived from both exons and introns and localise within the nucleus; ecircRNAs are derived from exons and localise within the cytoplasm [150]
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Schematic illustration of the molecular mechanisms of circular RNAs. Circular RNAs have been suggested to participate in regulating biologically important pathways. It does so through a sponging miRNA to regulate RNA expression; b acting as protein decoys and scaffolds to facilitate protein–protein/protein-RNA interactions; c acting as regulatory elements for transcription and mRNA splicing
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Schematic illustration of circular RNAs expression pattern across major types of organ injuries. The figure summarises all the recent reported dysregulated circular RNAs across each type of organ injury. Together, the up- and downregulated circular RNAs contributed to three main biological functions: cell proliferation, cell apoptosis, and inflammation. These pathways may result in either alleviating or aggravating organ injuries. Each of the circular RNA and its respective roles are discussed in the paper
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