Perspective on novel proteins encoded by circular RNAs in glioblastoma

Circular RNAs(circRNAs)are generated by the non-canonical back-splicing of pre-mRNA and have been shown to be present in a wide variety of tissues at lower expression levels than their associated linear RNAs1.The advent of high-throughput sequencing technologies has enabled the identification of circRNAs with biological functions in diseases,particularly cancers.Because their stable circular structures resist digestion by RNase R,circRNAs accumulate in the brain with aging in a conservative form wherein neurons seldom undergo mitosis;some of these RNAs have been reported to serve as prognostic biomarkers for central nervous system(CNS)disease2.