Circular RNAs expression profiles and potential key molecules incompletely transected spinal cord injury.

Circular RNA is implicated in numerous diseases and conditions, including traumatic injury to the central nervoussystem. However, we know little regarding their role in completely transected spinal cord injury (SCI). Our studyused high-throughput sequencing to analyze circular RNA expression in rats after experimental completetransection of spinal cord. We found differential expression in 400 circular RNAs after SCI, with 249 significantlyup-regulated and 151 significantly down-regulated. We then selected five circular RNAs for qRT-PCR validation,and the results were in agreement with RNA sequencing. Additionally, we predicted the function of circular RNAin SCI through GO and KEGG analyses, as well as the construction of circRNA/microRNA interaction networks.Furthermore, we identified circular RNA chr9:1829226-1834212 and mRNA Hdac11 as key molecules after SCI.In conclusion, this study is the first to characterize circular RNA function in rats after completely transected SCI,through identifying their differential expression. Our results provide insight into the mechanism and therapeutictargets of SCI. Overall design: Spinal cord circular RNA profiles of wild type and spinal cord injury(SCI) rats were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate, using Illumina GAIIx.The latter group was subjected to surgery that completely transected the spinal cord, whereas the control was treated with laminectomy alone.