Human papillomavirus 16 E7 oncoprotein alters the expression profiles of circular RNAs in Caski cells

Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancer in female worldwide. The expression of high-risk human papillomavirus E7 oncogene is necessary for the maintenance of malignant phenotypes and transformation. Accumulating studies of this protein has been explored in cervical cancer, however, there are fewer studies on how E7 expression affects the expression of global circular RNA. CircRNA, a promising biomarker and even therapeutic target, has become a star molecular in research after miRNA and long non-coding RNA. Our aim of this study was to investigate the global circRNA levels modulated by HPV E7 expression and identified the potential consequences for mechanism studies. Here we investigated the expression profiles of circRNAs by transfecting E7 siRNA in Caski cells with high-throughput microarray technology. In total, we identified 526 dysregulated circRNAs with fold change ≥2 or≤0.5, and p< 0.05. Among them, 352 were up-regulated and 174 were down-regulated. In addition, 8 selected circRNAs confirmed using qRT-PCR was in line with the results of microarray analysis. Furthermore, bioinformatic analyses indicated that differently expressed circRNAs might implicate in the mTOR signaling pathway, proline metabolism and glutathione metabolism. In conclusion, this study showed the expression profiles of circRNAs regulated by HPV16 E7 in cervical cancer cells and provides novel insights into the new potential candidates for future mechanism studies.