© CLIVEWA/SHUTTERSTOCK.COMCircular RNAs (circRNAs) have attracted growing attention in recent years, but their function in living organisms has long remained a mystery. Now, researchers report that one circRNA, Cdr1as, regulates microRNA levels in the mammalian brain, and that its removal results in abnormal neuronal activity and behavioral impairments in mice. The findings were published today (August 10) in Science.
“There are few papers where you can really say it’s a breakthrough,” says Sebastian Kadener, a neuroscientist and circRNA researcher at Brandeis University who was not involved in the work. “But this paper is really exciting. It’s the first real demonstration of a function of these molecules in vivo in an animal.”
CircRNAs, or simply “circles,” are formed when one or more exons or introns are “back-spliced” into a loop instead of a linear transcript. Once thought to be the result of errors in gene expression, hundreds of circles are now known to be specifically expressed, and are conserved across animal species.
Cdr1as, a circRNA that is highly expressed in the mammalian brain, is one of the best characterized circles to date. When the Max ...
