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Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 6|pp 5071—5090

Comprehensive analysis of circular RNA profiles in skeletal muscles of aging mice and after aerobic exercise intervention

Mingwei Guo1,2, Jin Qiu2, Fei Shen3, Sainan Wang2, Jian Yu2, Hui Zuo2, Jing Yao2, Sainan Xu2, Tianhui Hu2, Dongmei Wang2, Yu Zhao3, Yepeng Hu1, Feixia Shen1, Xinran Ma1,2, Jian Lu3, Xuejiang Gu1, Lingyan Xu1,2
  • 1Department of Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China
  • 2Shanghai Key Laboratory of Regulatory Biology, Institute of Biomedical Sciences and School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
  • 3Key Laboratory of Adolescent Health Assessment and Exercise Intervention, Ministry of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
* Equal contribution
Received: July 13, 2019Accepted: March 9, 2020Published: March 17, 2020

Copyright © 2020 Guo 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

Aging induces gradual accumulation of damages in cells and tissues, which leads to physiological dysfunctions. Aging-associated muscle dysfunction is commonly seen in aged population and severely affects their physical activity and life quality, against which aerobic training has been shown to exert antagonizing or alleviating effects. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) play important roles in various physiological processes, yet their involvement in aging-associated muscle dysfunction is not well understood. In this study, we performed comprehensive analysis of circRNAs profiles in quadriceps muscles in sedentary young and aging mice, as well as aging mice with aerobic exercise using RNA sequencing. Our results identified circRNAs altered by factors of aging and aerobic exercise. Their host genes were then predicted and analyzed by gene ontology enrichment analysis. Importantly, we found that circBBS9 featured decreased levels in aging compared to young mice and elevated expression in exercise versus sedentary aging mice. Besides, we performed GO and KEGG analysis on circBBS9 target genes, as well as established the circBBS9-miRNA-mRNAs interaction network. Our results indicate that circBBS9 may play active roles in muscle aging by mediating the benefits of aerobic training intervention, thus may serve as a novel therapeutic target combating aging-associated muscle dysfunction.