Comprehensive profiling of extracellular RNA in HPV-induced cancers using an improved pipeline for small RNA-seq analysis

Extracellular RNAs (exRNAs) have attracted great attention due to their essential role in cell-to-cell communication as well as their potential as non-invasive disease biomarkers. Recent studies have shown that exRNAs are associated with a variety of biological processes. Thus, the study of deregulated exRNAs would provide insight into disease progression. At present, there is no consensus on the best method to profile exRNA expression, which leads to significant variability across studies. To address this issue, we established a robust pipeline for comprehensive profiling of small exRNAs isolated from cell culture. With this method, we performed small RNA sequencing of exosomes (EXOs), microvesicles (MVs) and source cells from 14 cancer cell lines. Overall design: small RNA-seq to identify miRNA expression in extracellular RNAs.