Abstract
Competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) are natural transcripts that can act as endogenous sponges of microRNAs (miRNAs), modulating miRNA action upon target mRNAs. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are one among the various classes of ceRNAs. They are produced from a process called back-splicing and have been identified in many eukaryotes. In plants, their effective action as a miRNA sponge was not yet demonstrated. To address this question, public mRNAseq data from Argonaute-immunoprecipitation libraries (AGO-IP) of Arabidopsis thaliana flowers were used in association with a bioinformatics comparative multi-method to identify putative circular RNAs. A total of 27,812 circRNAs, with at least two reads at the back-splicing junction, were identified. Further analyses were used to select those circRNAs with potential miRNAs binding sites. As AGO forms a ternary complex with miRNA and target mRNA, targets count in AGO-IP and input libraries were compared, demonstrating that mRNA targets of these miRNAs are enriched in AGO-IP libraries. Through this work, five circRNAs that may function as miRNA sponges were identified and one of them were validated by PCR and sequencing. Our findings indicate that this post-transcriptional regulation can also occur in plants.