CircAFF1 is a circRNA with a role in alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma cell cycle migration

Circular RNAs (circRNAs), a new division of covalently closed RNA formed by a back-splicing reaction, have been involved in the regulation of diverse processes including those that occur in the development and pathologic processes such as cancer. In this manuscript, we describe circAFF1, a circular RNA overexpressed in representative rhabdomyosarcoma cell lines. We demonstrated that circAFF1 is a cytoplasmatic circRNA and its depletion in alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma cells impacts cell homeostasis favouring cell migration, pointing to this non-coding RNA as a novel regulator of the alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma progression and as a putative future therapeutic target. High-throughput sequencing of Poly-A+ RNA from alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma cells transfected with a siRNA targeting circAFF1 back-splicing junction (si-circAFF1). The raw data produced from cells treated with a control siRNA (si-SCR) were previously deposited in GEO with the accession code GSE174397.