Natural circular RNA encodes regulatory small peptides in Mammalian cells

To test the hypothesis that circRNAs might encode functional peptides in mammalian cells, we studied the long intergenic non-protein coding RNA, p53 induced transcript (LINC-PINT), which was previously reported as a tumor suppressor and connected p53 activation with polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2). We selected this long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) for further analysis because LINC-PINT has a long exon 2 which in accordance with the bioinformatical analyzed circular RNA standard.The following immunoblotting showed 87aa peptide level also decreased, indicating that this peptide is encoded by circPINTexon2. We name this circRNA encoded peptide PINT87aa. To investigate the possible regulatory role of PINT87aa, we did the expression micro array in PINT87aa stably transfect U251 or U87 glioblastoma cells and their control cells. The array analysis reveals that PINT87aa may involve in the cell cycle regulation, anti-apoptosis effects and multiple oncogenic signaling pathway activation.