{"doi":"10.1101/2021.02.28.433292","title":"Reverse complementary matches simultaneously promote both back-splicing and exon-skipping","abstract":"Summary Circular RNAs (circRNAs) play diverse roles in different biological and physiological environments and are always expressed in a tissue-specific manner. Tissue-specific circRNA expression profile can help understand how circRNAs are regulated. Here, using large-scale neuron isolation from the first larval stage of Caenorhabditis elegans ( C. elegans ) followed by whole-transcriptome RNA sequencing, I provide the first neuronal circRNA data in C. elegans . I show that circRNAs are highly expressed in the neurons of C. elegans and are preferably derived from neuronal genes. More importantly, reverse complementary matches in circRNA-flanking introns are not only required for back-splicing but also promote the skipping of exon(s) to be circularized. Interestingly, one pair of RCM in zip-2 is highly conserved across five nematode ortholog genes, which show conserved exon-skipping patterns. Finally, through one-by-one mutagenesis of all the splicing sites and branch points required for exon-skipping and back-splicing in the zip-2 gene, I show that exon-skipping is not absolutely required for back-splicing, neither the other way. Instead, the coupled exon-skipping and back-splicing are happening at the same time.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2021,"id":218461,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9572,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":709144,"name":"Dong Cao","orcid":"0000-0002-7253-9043","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":63,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:53:29.626149Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}