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Research Paper|Volume 10, Issue 4|pp 833—852

CircRNAs in the tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri) brain during postnatal development and aging

CaiXia Lu1,2,3, XiaoMei Sun1,2,3, Na Li1,2, WenGuang Wang1,2, DeXuan Kuang1, PinFen Tong1,2, YuanYuan Han1, JieJie Dai1,2,3
  • 1Center of Tree Shrew Germplasm Resources, Institute of Medical Biology, Chinese Academy of Medical Science and Peking Union Medical College, Kunming, China
  • 2Yunnan Key Laboratory of Vaccine Research and Development on Severe Infectious Diseases, Kunming, China
  • 3Yunnan Innovation Team of Standardization and Application Research in Tree Shrew, Kunming, China
Received: February 9, 2018Accepted: April 23, 2018Published: April 30, 2018
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.101437

Copyright: © 2018 Lu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a novel type of non-coding RNA expressed across different species and tissues. At present, little is known about the expression and function of circRNAs in the tree shrew brain. In this study, we used RNA-seq to identify 35,007 circRNAs in hippocampus and cerebellum samples from infant (aged 47–52 days), young (aged 15–18 months), and old (aged 78–86 months) tree shrews. We observed no significant changes in the total circRNA expression profiles in different brain regions over time. However, circRNA tended to be downregulated in the cerebellum over time. Real-time RT-PCR analysis verified the presence of circRNAs. KEGG analysis indicated the occurrence of ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis, the MAPK signaling pathway, phosphatidylinositol signaling system, long-term depression, the rap1 signaling pathway, and long-term potentiation in both brain regions. We also observed that 29,087 (83.1%) tree shrew circRNAs shared homology with human circRNAs. The competing endogenous RNA networks suggested novel_circRNA_007362 potential functions as a 24-miRNAs sponge to regulate UBE4B expression. Thus, we obtained comprehensive circRNA expression profiles in the tree shrew brain during postnatal development and aging, which might help to elucidate the functions of circRNAs during brain aging and in age-related diseases.