CircRNAs are a highly abundant type of RNAs generated by circularization of specific exon. We
recently showed that circRNAs are generated co-transcriptionally and in competition with
canonical pre-mRNA splicing (Ashwall-Fluss et al., Mol Cell 2014). We found that introns
flanking circRNA-containing exons are inefficiently spliced, likely due to their
longer-than- average length and to the presence of inverted repeats. Moreover, our data strongly
suggests that circRNA biogenesis per se is an important regulator of mRNA production. This is
because circRNAs are generated at the expense of canonical mRNA isoforms.
Ashwal-Fluss R., Meyer M., Pamudurti N.R., Ivanov A., Bartok O., Evantal N., Hanan M., Memczak S., Rajewsky N.* and Kadener S.* “CircRNA biogenesis and canonical splicing compete with each other” . Molecular Cell 55:172 (2014).[Web]
