Spatio-temporal regulation of circular RNA expression during porcine embryonic brain development

Here we profile the expression of circRNA in 6 different brain tissues at up to 6 different time-points during fetal porcine development, constituting the first report of circRNA in a large animal. An unbiased analysis reveals a highly complex regulation pattern of thousands of circular RNAs, with a distinct spatio-temporal expression profile. The amount and complexity of the circRNA expression was most pronounced in cortex day 60 from gestation. Here we find 4,634 unique circRNAs expressed from 2,195 genes out of a total of 13,854 expressed genes. These data demonstrate that circRNAs are highly abundant and dynamically expressed in a spatio-temporally manner in porcine fetal brain, suggesting important functions during mammalian brain development. Sequencing of rRNA depleted total RNA from 14 embryonic porcine brain samples, no replicates were done