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A guide to naming eukaryotic circular RNAs

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Alternative splicing of eukaryotic messenger RNA transcripts often leads to the production of several mature RNAs — including linear RNAs and circular RNAs (circRNAs) — from a single gene locus. The names given to circRNAs are often ambiguous and lack consistency across studies. This Comment calls on the community to embrace a common nomenclature for naming circRNAs to ensure clarity and reproducibility.

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Fig. 1: Suggested naming scheme to clarify the complexity of patterns of expression of circRNAs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology, CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science, Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China

    Ling-Ling Chen

  2. Institute of Biochemistry, Faculty of Biology and Chemistry, Justus Liebig University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany

    Albrecht Bindereif

  3. Department of Biology and Biotechnologies ‘Charles Darwin’ and IIT Center for Life Nano- & Neuro-Science@Sapienza, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Irene Bozzoni

  4. Center for Personal Dynamic Regulomes, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Howard Y. Chang

  5. Integrative Program in Biological and Genome Sciences, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    A. Gregory Matera

  6. Laboratory of Genetics and Genomics, National Institute on Aging Intramural Research Program, National Institutes of Health, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Myriam Gorospe

  7. Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO), Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Thomas B. Hansen & Jørgen Kjems

  8. Center for Molecular Medicine, Children’s Hospital, Fudan University and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Medical Epigenetics, International Laboratory of Medical Epigenetics and Metabolism, Institutes of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Xu-Kai Ma & Li Yang

  9. Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, 1 Research Link National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Jun Wei Pek

  10. Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology, Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Hemholtz Association, Berlin, Germany

    Nikolaus Rajewsky

  11. Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Julia Salzman

  12. Verna and Marrs McLean Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Therapeutic Innovation Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA

    Jeremy E. Wilusz

  13. Beijing Institutes of Life Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Fangqing Zhao

Authors
  1. Ling-Ling Chen
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  2. Albrecht Bindereif
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  3. Irene Bozzoni
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  4. Howard Y. Chang
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  5. A. Gregory Matera
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  6. Myriam Gorospe
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  7. Thomas B. Hansen
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  8. Jørgen Kjems
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  9. Xu-Kai Ma
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  10. Jun Wei Pek
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  11. Nikolaus Rajewsky
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  12. Julia Salzman
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  13. Jeremy E. Wilusz
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  14. Li Yang
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  15. Fangqing Zhao
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Ling-Ling Chen, Jeremy E. Wilusz or Li Yang.

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Competing interests

J.E.W. is a consultant for Laronde. H.Y.C. is a co-founder of Orbital Therapeutics. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Cell Biology thanks Igor Ulitsky, Shenglin Huang, and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Chen, LL., Bindereif, A., Bozzoni, I. et al. A guide to naming eukaryotic circular RNAs. Nat Cell Biol 25, 1–5 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41556-022-01066-9

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