Source: The First Affiliated Hospital
Written by: The First Affiliated Hospital
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

Recently, the research paper of Associate Professor Nu Zhang’s team in the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun-Yat sen University, has been published online in Nature Communications (IF 2018=12.35), with the title "A peptide of the circular form of LINC-PINT suppresses oncogenic transcriptional elongation in glioblastoma". The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun-Yat sen University is the first author unit and the only correspondence author unit.

The study found that some circular RNAs may have the potential to translate proteins through RNA sequencing combined with bioinformatics analysis. This team found that the second exon of the long non-coding RNA LINC-PINT formed a 1084 nt long circular RNA molecule by self-cyclization, which this team named Circ-PINT. The circular Circ-PINT was mainly localized in the cytoplasm, while the linear non-coding LINC-PINT was localized in the nucleus. This group found that the circular RNA sequence contained a highly conserved open reading frame. By preparing specific antibodies and CRISPR/cas9 knockout cell lines, this study confirmed that the circular RNA circ-PINT drived translation of a novel polypeptide consisting of 87 amino acids via the internal ribosome insertion site sequence (IRES), which they named PINT87aa. This study showed that PINT87aa polypeptide was significantly down-regulated in tumors, suggesting its potential role as a tumor suppressor gene. The mechanism study found that PINT87aa could inhibit the transcriptional elongation of various oncogenes by binding to the polymerase-associated factor complex gene PAF1, thereby inhibiting the occurrence and progression of malignant glioma, and providing a new idea for the diagnosis and treatment of malignant glioma.

This work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China, the National Natural Science Outstanding Youth Foundation of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Science and Technology Project of Guangdong Province, and the 863 Research Program. The first authors are Maolei Zhang, Kun Zhao and Xiaoping Xu. The sole corresponding author is Associate Professor Nu Zhang in the Department of Neurosurgery, the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, majoring in the malignancy of central nervous system.

Paper link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06862-2?from=groupmessage&isappinstalled=0