Development of a one-shot identification method for full-length circular RNAs using long-sequencing technology

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 21K19238
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Medium-sized Section 43:Biology at molecular to cellular levels, and related fields
• Research Institution: Hakodate Junior College
• Principal Investigator: Umekage So 函館短期大学, 食物栄養学科, 講師(移行) (30419436)
• Project Period (FY): 2021-07-09 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: circular RNA

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Circular RNA is expected to be new biomarkers, and the search for new cyclic RNA for diagnostic uses is being vigorously pursued. Conventional circular RNA finding method is mainly based on short-read sequencing technology, which has the disadvantage that the entire sequence of circular RNAs cannot be determined at once. In this study, I focused on long-read sequencing technology to overcome this problem and aimed to develop a method that can determine the entire length of cyclic RNA sequences at once. A Python program was created to exclude biased sequences from the long-read sequencing data and to detect circular RNA sequence using a string matching library, RapidFuzz. On the other hand, the method for creating a long-read sequencing library to generate concatemers derived from circular RNAs was remained incomplete.

Free Research Field

RNA biology

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

環状RNAをロングリードシークエンシングによって一気に解決することができれば、バイオマーカーとなりうる環状RNAの探索がよりスムーズになると期待できる。また、検体試料（例えば唾液）から環状RNA検出までの全行程を確立することができれば、新たな健康診断ツールとしての利用が期待される。