CircRNA preofiles in mock-infected and human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infected human embryonic lung fibroblasts (HELF) cells

In this study, RNA-seq analysis was performed to generally understand the circRNA profiles of mock-infected and HCMV-infected HELF cells. Totally, 27,409 and 35,515 host circRNAs were identified in mock-infected and HCMV-infected HELF cells by RNA-seq respectively. Among them, 278 circRNAs were significantly modified filtrating by a threshold value of >2 (or <-2) fold-change and q-value <0.05. GO and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis suggested that the remarkably changed circRNAs might play important roles in viral entry, cell proliferation, and inhibition of apoptosis. Verification of four selected circRNAs ( circSP100, circMAP3K1, circTRIO, and circPLEKHM1) was performed using RT-PCR and Sanger sequencing. Moreover, further verification of circSP100 was performed using northern blotting and RT-qPCR and proteins binding directly to circSP100 were purified using RNA antisense purification (RAP). circRNA profiles of mock-infect and HCMV-infected HELF cells were generated by deep sequencing using Illumina Hiseq 2500