Spatio-temporal regulation of circular RNA expression during porcine embryonic brain development
GENOME BIOLOGY
Authors: Veno, Morten T.; Hansen, Thomas B.; Veno, Susanne T.; Clausen, Bettina H.; Grebing, Manuela; Finsen, Bente; Holm, Ida E.; Kjems, Jorgen
Abstract
Background: Recently, thousands of circular RNAs (circRNAs) have been discovered in various tissues and cell types from human, mouse, fruit fly and nematodes. However, expression of circRNAs across mammalian brain development has never been examined. Results: Here we profile the expression of circRNA in five brain tissues at up to six time-points during fetal porcine development, constituting the first report of circRNA in the brain development of a large animal. An unbiased analysis reveals a highly complex regulation pattern of thousands of circular RNAs, with a distinct spatio-temporal expression profile. The amount and complexity of circRNA expression was most pronounced in cortex at day 60 of gestation. At this time-point we find 4634 unique circRNAs expressed from 2195 genes out of a total of 13,854 expressed genes. Approximately 20 % of the porcine splice sites involved in circRNA production are functionally conserved between mouse and human. Furthermore, we observe that "hot-spot" genes produce multiple circRNA isoforms, which are often differentially expressed across porcine brain development. A global comparison of porcine circRNAs reveals that introns flanking circularized exons are longer than average and more frequently contain proximal complementary SINEs, which potentially can facilitate base pairing between the flanking introns. Finally, we report the first use of RNase R treatment in combination with in situ hybridization to show dynamic subcellular localization of circRNA during development. Conclusions: These data demonstrate that circRNAs are highly abundant and dynamically expressed in a spatio-temporal manner in porcine fetal brain, suggesting important functions during mammalian brain development.
Identification of Novel Targets of RBM5 in the Healthy and Injured Brain
NEUROSCIENCE
Authors: Jackson, Travis C.; Janesko-Feldman, Keri; Gorse, Kiersten; Vagni, Vincent A.; Jackson, Edwin K.; Kochanek, Patrick M.
Abstract
The tumor suppressor RNA-binding motif 5 (RBM5) regulates the expression levels and cassette exon-definition (i.e. splicing) of a select set of mRNAs in a tissue-specific manner. Most RBM5-regulated targets were identified in oncological investigations and frequently involve genes which mediate apoptotic cell death. Little is known about the role of RBM5 in the brain. Also, it is unclear if a brain injury may be required to detect RBM5 mediated effects on pro-apoptotic genes due to their low expression levels in the healthy adult CNS at baseline. Conditional/floxed (brain-specific) gene deleter mice were generated to elucidate CNS-specific RBM5 mRNA targets. Male/female mice were subjected to a severe controlled cortical impact (CCI) traumatic brain injury (TBI) in order to increase the background expression of pro-death mRNAs and facilitate testing of the hypothesis that RBM5 inhibition decreases post-injury upregulation of caspases/FAS in the CNS. As expected, a CCI increased caspases/FAS mRNA in the injured cortex. RBM5 KO did not affect their levels or splicing. Surprisingly, KO increased the mRNA levels of novel targets including casein kinase 2 alpha prime interacting protein (Csnka2ip/CKT2) - a gene not thought to be expressed in the brain, contrary to findings here. Twenty-two unique splicing events were also detected in KOs including increased block-inclusion of cassette exons 20-22 in regulating synaptic membrane exocytosis 2 (Rims2). In conclusion, here we used genome-wide transcriptomic analysis on healthy and injured RBM5 KO mouse brain tissue to elucidate the first known gene targets of this enigmatic RBP in this CNS. (C) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of IBRO. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).