Next Generation Sequencing Facilitates Quantitative Analysis of Wild Type and Diabetic db/db Mice Islets Transcriptomes

Circular RNAs constitute an extensive fraction of the mammalian transcriptome.In this study, circular RNAs dysregulated in the islets of diabetic db/db mice were identified by high-throughput RNA sequencing. More than 5000 circRNAs were detected using RNA sequencing, indicating that circular transcripts were abundant in islets. Among them, we found that circ-Tulp4 showed significant downregulation in diabetic mouse islet cells. Further experiments indicated that modulating the expression of circ-Tulp4 in β cell lines desensitized β-cells to lipotoxicity. Islet circRNAs and mRNA profiling in db/db and db/m control mice were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate, using Illumina Hiseq.