Disease-Associated Circular RNAs: From Biology to Computational Identification

Figure 1

Translation of circRNAs. (a) circRNAs can serve as a miRNA sponge, containing multiple binding sites for miRNAs (blue) or RBPs (in red), thus affecting gene regulation. (b and c) Illustrations show the role of circRNAs as miRNAs in healthy and tumor tissues. Tumor-suppressor circRNA sponges contain binding sites for tumor-suppressor miRNAs (light purple), while oncogenic circRNA sponges contain binding sites for oncogenic miRNAs (red). Tumor-suppressor circRNAs upregulate tumor-suppressor genes (yellow) in healthy tissues but downregulate these genes in tumor tissues, whereas oncogenic circRNAs suppress oncogene (green) expression in healthy tissues but upregulate these genes in tumor tissues. AGO: Argonaute; RBP: RNA-binding protein. Illustration is inspired by and modified from [164]. (d) New studies suggest that circRNAs generated by backsplicing are able to be translated into proteins. Illustration is modified from [38, 39]. Illustrations were generated using BioRender.

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