Researchers are gaining new insights into neurological diseases by studying circular RNAs (circRNAs) in brain cells. A new study by investigators from the Brigham and Women's Hospital identified over 11,000 distinct RNA circles that characterized brain cells implicated in Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. Their results are published in Nature Communications.
Scherzer and colleagues laser-captured neurons from 190 frozen postmortem human brain samples, including some non-neuronal cells for comparison. Then, they used ultra-deep, total RNA sequencing to study the exact sequences of genetic code found in the circular RNAs within these two cell types. Credit: Clemens Scherzer, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Scherzer and colleagues laser-captured neurons from 190 frozen postmortem human brain samples, including some non-neuronal cells for comparison. Then, they used ultra-deep, total RNA sequencing to study the exact sequences of genetic code found in the circular RNAs within these two cell types. "It was surprising that the circular RNAs rather than the linear RNAs produced from these gene locations defined neuron identity," said the first author Xianjun Dong, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology and the Genomics and Bioinformatics Hub at the Brigham."circRNA diversity provides finely tuned, cell type-specific information that is not explained by the corresponding linear RNAs from the same gene.
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