Tuberculosis (TB), caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection, remains one of the most threatening infectious diseases worldwide. A series of challenges still exist for TB prevention, diagnosis and treatment, which therefore require more attempts to clarify the pathological and immunological mechanisms in the development and progression of TB. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a large class of non-coding RNA, mostly expressed in eukaryotic cells, which are generated by the spliceosome through the back-splicing of linear RNAs.
1. Introduction
Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most common infectious diseases in the world, predominantly caused by one of the most tricky pathogens,
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), which lies dormant in the host cells by escaping the host immune clearance
[1,2][1][2]. Among people infected with Mtb, totaling a quarter of the population worldwide, 5–10% of the infected patients will develop active TB disease (ATB)
[1]. To the present time, the increasing emergence of multidrug resistant TB has been a major barrier to public health security, reported to be responsible for over ten thousand deaths related to antimicrobial resistance
[2]. The co-infection conditions, such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) co-infected TB, and other disease coexisted conditions, such as diabetes coexisted TB, make the pathogenesis of TB more a more complicated question as to cure and control of the disease
[3,4][3][4]. Other factors, such as the widespread prevalence of the tuberculosis bacterium of high virulence
[5] and uncontrollable relapse TB cases
[6[6][7],
7], also present challenges to TB disease control. Currently, the only licensed tuberculosis vaccine, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) is recommended at birth to protect children against tubercular meningitis, but its protective effects against TB are very poor in adults
[8,9][8][9]. Moreover, Mtb can remain dormant in the host cells for a long time
[10], which introduces an asymptomatic latent TB infection condition, likely detectable by an interferon-γ release assay, but without other combined methods for accurate and rapid diagnosis. Therefore, it is urgent to clarify the pathological and immunological mechanisms in the development and progression of TB, an effort which might benefit the developments of more effective strategies for TB prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a kind of non-coding protein RNA expressed in most eukaryotic cells. Compared with linear RNAs, the absence of five-prime caps and three-prime tails allow circRNAs to loop into a single-stranded, covalently closed structure for more stable and highly conserved characteristics, which helps to avoid or escape from RNAse digestion
[11,12][11][12]. In the 1970s, viroids in plants, exhibiting high thermal stability and single-stranded covalently closed structure, were found to be the first circular RNA by Sanger et al.
[13], which further confirmed by sequence analysis two years later
[14].
TResearch
is work ers thus opened up a new field of biology and medicine for the functional and mechanistic study of circRNAs in different species.
In the 1990s, researchers serendipitously discovered that the products of splicing transcripts with an inverted order of exons, called mis-splicing, which occurred specifically at consensus splice sites, could lead to the formation of circular RNA molecules, such as the tumor suppressor gene deleted in colorectal carcinomas (DCC)
[15] and human proto-oncogene
ets-1 [16]. These non-polyadenylated scrambled transcripts were found at much lower levels than in the normal transcripts
[17]. However, the prevalence and the significance of circRNAs were not discovered over the ensuing decades, until high-throughput sequencing could be applied. With the assistance of deep sequencing, substantial circRNAs were discovered and were no longer simply considered to be accidental byproducts of splicing
[18]. Salzman et al. identified numerous RNA isoforms with scrambled exons in normal and malignant human cells, and then confirmed that these scrambled-exon transcripts were circRNAs enriched in cytoplasm. These results proved that circRNAs were ubiquitous, and that most of them were highly expressed in human cells
[11]. After this discovery, circRNAs in human cells began to receive extensive attention, and the emerging functions of circRNAs were subsequently identified.
2. Potentials of circRNAs as Biomarkers in TB
At present, laboratory diagnosis of TB is mainly based on sputum specimen smear microscopy and sputum culture. However, the sputum specimen smear microscopy is limited by the low sensitivity and specificity values and the sputum culture is restricted by its long detection time, which may miss the proper treatment in time
[101][19]. Therefore, it is of great significance to develop novel strategies for early diagnosis and timely treatments, thus curbing the spread of TB disease. Discovering molecular markers with significant distinguishing efficiency to discriminate between TB cases and healthy individuals are of vital importance to develop novel strategy for rapid diagnosis of TB.
It has been established that circRNAs are widely involved in a variety of physiological and pathological processes. The aberrantly expressed circRNAs found in patients might hint at the potential role of circRNAs in the diagnosis of diverse diseases
[102][20]. As for the wide distribution and stability characteristics, circRNAs are able to be easily detected in body fluids, such as blood, urine, exosomes and so on
[103,104][21][22]. Recently, more and more studies are suggesting that circRNAs can act as diagnostic biomarkers for TB
[105,106,107,108,109,110,111,112,113][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31].
WResearche
rs have summarized of all the circular RNAs that are currently reported to be involved in regulating Tuberculosis in
Table 1. However, there are still many aspects of the question that have yet to be sufficiently explored to learn about the essential roles of circRNAs after tuberculosis infection, which might enhance
ourthe understanding of TB pathogenesis and benefit the development of TB diagnostic or therapeutic strategies.
Table 1. Summary of all the circular RNAs that are currently reported to be involved in regulating Tuberculosis.
| Circular RNA |
Function |
Expression |
Derived From |
Targets/Signaling Pathways |
AUC |
Number of TB Patients/Controls |
Ref. |
| hsa_circ_0001204 |
biomarker |
down |
plasma |
|
0.871 |
145/120 |
[110][28] |
| hsa_circ_0001747 |
biomarker |
down |
plasma |
|
0.830 |
145/120 |
[110][28] |
hsa_circ_0001204; hsa_circ_0001747 |
biomarker |
down |
plasma |
|
0.928 * |
145/120 |
[110][28] |
| hsa_circ_0001953 |
biomarker |
up |
plasma |
|
0.826 |
120/100 |
[109][27] |
| hsa_circ_0009024 |
biomarker |
up |
plasma |
|
0.777 |
120/100 |
[109][27] |
| hsa_circ_0001953; hsa_circ_0009024 |
biomarker |
up |
plasma |
|
0.915 * |
120/100 |
[109][27] |
| hsa_circ_001937 |
biomarker |
up |
PBMCs |
|
0.873 |
115/90 |
[111][29] |
| hsa_circ_0043497 |
biomarker |
up |
Mtb-infected MDMs |
|
0.860 |
96/85 |
[107][25] |
| hsa_circ_0001204 |
biomarker |
down |
Mtb-infected MDMs |
|
0.848 |
96/85 |
[107][25] |
| hsa_circ_103017 |
biomarker |
up |
PBMCs |
|
0.870 |
31/30 |
[112][30] |
| hsa_circ_059914 |
biomarker |
up |
PBMCs |
|
0.821 |
31/30 |
[112][30] |
| hsa_circ_0028883 |
biomarker |
up |
PBMCs |
miR-409-5p |
0.773 |
20/20 |
[113][31] |
| hsa_circ_0005836 |
biomarker |
down |
PBMCs |
|
no mention |
49/45 |
[105][23] |
| hsa_circ_0001380 |
biomarker |
down |
PBMCs |
|
0.9502 |
32/31 |
[114][32] |
| hsa_circ_103571 |
biomarker |
down |
plasma |
|
0.838 |
32/29 |
[106][24] |
| circ_051239 |
biomarker |
up |
serum |
|
0.9738 |
72/30 |
[108][26] |
| circ_029965 |
biomarker |
up |
serum |
|
0.9443 |
72/30 |
[108][26] |
| circ_404022 |
biomarker |
up |
serum |
|
0.9682 |
72/30 |
[108][26] |
SAMD8_ hsa_circRNA994 |
no mention |
no mention |
whole blood |
|
no mention |
45/61 |
[115][33] |
TWF1_ hsa_circRNA9897 |
no mention |
no mention |
whole blood |
|
no mention |
45/61 |
[115][33] |
| circTRAPPC6B |
miRNA sponge |
down |
PBMCs |
miR-874-3p ATG16L1 autophagy |
0.8609 |
32/31 |
[116][34] |
| hsa_circ_0003528 |
miRNA sponge |
up |
plasma |
miR-224-5p miR-324-5p miR-488-5p CTLA4 polarization |
no mention |
50/50 |
[117][35] |
| hsa_circ_101128 |
biomarker; miRNA sponge |
up |
PBMCs |
let-7a MAPK/P13K-Akt pathway |
0.817 |
31/30 |
[112][30] |
| hsa_circ_0045474 |
miRNA sponge |
down |
PBMCs |
miR-582-5p TNKS2 autophagy |
no mention |
15/15 |
[118][36] |
| circAGFG1 |
miRNA sponge |
up |
alveolar macrophages in ATB patients |
Notch miR-1257 apoptosis autophagy |
no mention |
no mention |
[119][37] |
| circ_0001490 |
miRNA sponge |
down |
Mtb-infected THP-1 macrophages; serum |
miR-579-3p FSTL1 inflammatory response |
no mention |
40/23 |
[120][38] |
| cPWWP2A |
miRNA sponge |
down |
primary human MDMs |
miR-579 |
no mention |
no mention |
[121][39] |