Circular RNA profiling of retinas in chronic ocular hypertension induced glaucoma rat models

High-throughput based circRNAs profiling was determined between retina samples from glaucoma rat models induced by episcleral vein ligation and paramagnetic microbeads injection seperately, with control rats. The sequencing results were followingly confirmed by quantitative reverse-transcription PCR. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway enrichment analyses (KEGG) were adopted for annotation and predicting the functions of differentially expressed circRNAs. Results From this comparative circRNA analysis of retina samples from two glaucoma rat models (episcleral vein ligation and paramagnetic microbeads injnjection) and control rats, 3, 502 circRNAs were identified differentially expressed verified in two different models with the same variation trend. Of these, 697 were upregulated and 2,811 were downregulated compared to controls (both fold change > 2.0 and adjusted p-value < 0.001).

本研究针对分别采用巩膜静脉结扎术、顺磁性微珠注射法构建的青光眼大鼠模型，以及正常对照大鼠的视网膜样本，开展了基于高通量测序的环状RNA（circRNAs）表达谱分析。随后通过定量反转录聚合酶链反应（qRT-PCR）对测序结果进行了验证。采用基因本体论（Gene Ontology, GO）富集分析与京都基因与基因组百科全书通路富集分析（Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes, KEGG），对差异表达环状RNA进行功能注释与功能预测。本研究通过对两种青光眼大鼠模型（巩膜静脉结扎术组、顺磁性微珠注射组）及对照大鼠的视网膜样本进行环状RNA比较分析，共鉴定得到3502个在两种模型中表达趋势一致的差异表达环状RNA。其中，相较于对照组，697个环状RNA表达上调，2811个表达下调（差异倍数均大于2.0，校正P值均小于0.001）。