Project 466761

Researchers have long focused on how unexpected and permanent changes in our genetic makeup, or DNA leads to diseases like cancer. However, just looking at DNA might not be giving us the full picture. DNA has the vital information needed to maintain our bodies, but RNA is what does most of the work by reading and translating parts of DNA. While a large part of our genetic information can be read, only a small portion is translated into the molecules essential for life. Therefore, most RNAs exists as different subtypes termed non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) that do not produce these molecules. Several types of ncRNAs have been found to be present in cancer and have different roles such as affecting how cancer cells respond to treatment and contributing to metastasis. One type of ncRNA is circular RNA (circRNA) which has distinct properties and functions. Compared to most RNAs, circRNAs are very stable and specific to different tissues. There is growing evidence of circRNAs being involved in cancer. Owing to their unique features, circRNAs have the potential to help in the diagnosis and prognosis of cancer and be targets for new therapeutics. However, more work remains to be done in understanding their behaviour, specifically, how the circularization occurs and how their expression is regulated. To this end, I aim to investigate the mechanism of circRNAs to better study and understand their involvement in diseases they are expressed in.