The expression, function, and coding potential of circular RNA circEDC3 in chicken skeletal muscle development

As an emerging class of non-coding transcripts, circular RNAs (circRNAs) are proved to participate in the complex process of myogenesis in diverse species. A previous study has identified circular RNA EDC3 (circEDC3) as a typical covalently closed circular RNA abundant in chicken skeletal muscle. This study found that circEDC3 is a conservative circular RNA and performed functional analysis to investigate the role of circEDC3 in chicken muscle growth. The results indicated that circEDC3 could inhibit (P<0.05) chicken skeletal muscle satellite cells (SMSCs) proliferation and differentiation but had no significant influence on SMSCs apoptosis. Additionally, bioinformatics analysis showed that circEDC3 had promising coding potential. The open reading frames (ORF) were found in circEDC3 in this study. Furthermore, this study predicted that circEDC3 had internal ribosome entry sites (IRES) and N-6-methyladenosine (m(6)A) motifs in different species, implying that circEDC3 might be translatable. This study revealed that circEDC3 might be a negative regulator in chicken muscle development and suggested it has protein-coding potential in different species.