CiRNat ------ To discover circular RNAs that are specific to the spinal cord during its development and injury

In this study, our goal is to discover circular RNAs that are specific to the spinal cord during its development and after injury in rats. To achieve this, we analyzed 15 RNA-Seq datasets containing 217 samples from rats and 7 RNA-Seq datasets with 94 samples from mice, all processed using the same analysis pipeline. We utilized the CIRCexplore3 pipeline to identify circular RNAs and quantified the expression of both circular and linear RNAs. The linear annotations for rats were obtained from Ensembl (mRatBN7.2, v109), and those for mice were downloaded from GenCode (vM27).
To facilitate researchers in exploring individual circular RNAs or circular RNAs from a locus, as well as their expression information across different datasets, we developed a Shiny application named “CiRNat” (Circular RNome in Rat). The development of this tool will greatly advance research into neurological diseases, particularly the study of the function of circular RNAs during spinal cord injury and repair.