RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Regulation of circular RNA circNFATc3 in cancer cells alters proliferation, migration and oxidative phosphorylation JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 741041 DO 10.1101/741041 A1 Thasni Karedath A1 Fatima M. Al-Dasim A1 Ikhlak Ahmed A1 Albandary Al-Qurashi A1 Afsheen Raza A1 Simeon S. Andrews A1 Stephanie Aron Ramadan A1 Nayra M Al-Thani A1 Ayeda Abdulsalam Ahmed A1 Yasmin Ali Mohamoud A1 Said Dermime A1 Joel A. Malek YR 2019 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/08/21/741041.abstract AB Circular RNAs were onced considered artifacts of transcriptome sequencing but have recently been identified as functionally relevant in multiple cancers. Although there is still no clear main function of circRNAs, several studies have revealed that circRNAs are expressed in a variety of eukaryotic organisms, demonstrate conservation across species, and are expressed in a regulated manner often independent of their parental linear isoforms. circNFATC3, an abundant and uncharacterized circular isoform of NFATC3 gene in solid tumors was identified from transcriptomic data. Here we show that circNFATC3 gain of and loss of function experiments using RNAi mediated circRNA silencing and circular Mini vector-mediated overexpression of circularized constructs in breast and ovarian cancer cell lines affects molecular phenotypes. Knockdown of circNFATC3 induces a reduction in cell proliferation, invasion, migration, and oxidative phosphorylation. Gain of function of circNFATc3 in MDA-MB -231 cells and SKOV3 cells show a significant increase in cell proliferation, migration, and respiration. The above results suggest that circNFATC3 is a functionally relevant circular RNA in cancer.