López-Nieva Pilar, Fernández-Navarro Pablo, Cobos-Fernández María Ángeles, González-Vasconcellos Iria, Sánchez Pérez Raúl, Aroca Ángel, Fernández-Piqueras José, Santos Javier
Genome Dynamics and Function Program, Genome Decoding Department, Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center (CBMSO), CSIC-Madrid Autonomous University, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
Institute of Health Research Jiménez Díaz Foundation, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
Noncoding RNA. 2022 Mar 30;8(2):26. doi: 10.3390/ncrna8020026.
Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are suggested to play a discriminative role between some stages of thymocyte differentiation. However, differential aspects of the stage of mature single-positive thymocytes remain to be explored. The purpose of this study is to investigate the differential expression pattern of circRNAs in three different development stages of human thymocytes, including mature single-positive cells, and perform predictions in silico regarding the ability of specific circRNAs when controlling the expression of genes involved in thymocyte differentiation. We isolate human thymocytes at three different stages of intrathymic differentiation and determine the expression of circRNAs and mRNA by RNASeq. We show that the differential expression pattern of 50 specific circRNAs serves to discriminate between the three human thymocyte populations. Interestingly, the downregulation of , a gene involved in T-cell differentiation in the thymus, could be simultaneously controlled by the downregulation of two circRNASs (hsa_circ_0031584 and hsa_circ_0019079) through the hypothetical liberation of hsa-miR-609. Our study provides, for the first time, significant insights into the usefulness of circRNAs in discriminating between different stages of thymocyte differentiation and provides new potential circRNA-miRNA-mRNA networks capable of controlling the expression of genes involved in T-cell differentiation in the thymus.
环状RNA（circRNAs）被认为在胸腺细胞分化的某些阶段发挥着鉴别作用。然而，成熟单阳性胸腺细胞阶段的差异方面仍有待探索。本研究的目的是调查circRNAs在人类胸腺细胞三个不同发育阶段（包括成熟单阳性细胞）中的差异表达模式，并对特定circRNAs在控制胸腺细胞分化相关基因表达时的能力进行计算机模拟预测。我们分离了胸腺内分化三个不同阶段的人类胸腺细胞，并通过RNA测序确定circRNAs和mRNA的表达。我们表明，50种特定circRNAs的差异表达模式有助于区分三个人类胸腺细胞群体。有趣的是，胸腺中参与T细胞分化的一个基因的下调，可以通过hsa-miR-609的假设性释放，同时由两种circRNAs（hsa_circ_0031584和hsa_circ_0019079）的下调来控制。我们的研究首次为circRNAs在区分胸腺细胞分化不同阶段的有用性提供了重要见解，并提供了新的潜在circRNA- miRNA- mRNA网络，能够控制胸腺中参与T细胞分化的基因的表达。
