Circular RNA Expression Profiles in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma by Sequence Analysis

Abstract

Circular RNAs (circRNAs), as a burgeoning sort of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), can regulate the expression of parental genes as miRNA sponges. This study was designed to explore the circRNA expression profile of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). High-throughput sequencing was performed to identify the circRNA expression profile of NPC patients compared with healthy controls. A total of 93 upregulated circRNAs and 77 downregulated circRNAs were identified. The expression levels of the top three upregulated and three downregulated circRNAs annotated by circBase were validated by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). GO and KEGG analyses showed that these differentially expressed circRNAs were potentially implicated in NPC pathogenesis. CircRNA-miRNA-target gene network analysis revealed a potential mechanism that hsa_circ_0002375 (circKITLG) may be involved in NPC through sponging up miR-3198 and interfering with its downstream targets. Silencing of circKITLG inhibited NPC cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in vitro. This study provides a leading and fundamental circRNA expression profile of NPC.

Disease‐Associated Circular RNAs: From Biology to Computational Identification

“…CircBase has been used in several key studies to identify targeted circRNAs, and this identification can be validated by quantitative real-time PCR or downstream analysis. Thus, circBase plays an important role in the identification of potential biomarkers for various cancers [134][135][136][137][138][139][140][141][142][143].…”

Immune Microenvironment Change and Involvement of Circular RNAs in TIL Cells of Recurrent Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

“…Nasopharyngeal carcinoma circular RNA expression data sets and the corresponding clinical data were downloaded from publicly available GEO databases. This database included 4 patients with NPC and 4 non-NPC nasopharyngeal epithelial tissues from GSE134797 (Yang et al, 2020). To find functional circRNAs in nasopharyngeal carcinoma, after downloading Nasopharyngeal carcinoma circRNA expression data from GEO database: GSE134797 (Illumina HiSeq 4000).…”

Role of Virally Encoded Circular RNAs in the Pathogenicity of Human Oncogenic Viruses

“…cancer (Xuan et al, 2016), esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (Xia et al, 2016), basal cell carcinoma (Sand et al, 2016b), cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (Sand et al, 2016a), ovarian carcinoma (Ahmed et al, 2016), cervical cancer (Wu et al, 2020), and nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC; Yang et al, 2020). During the oncogenesis process, circRNAs can serve as either oncogenes or tumor suppressors by inhibiting critical protein-coding and/or non-coding genes involved in oncogenesis.…”