Chimeric RNA in Cancer and Stem Cell Differentiation

Figure 1

Implications of chimeric RNA in oncogenesis. (a) Canonical processing of chimeric transcripts. Colored rectangles represent exons, and connecting lines represent introns. Colored arrows indicate splicing configuration. Circles represent amino acids, and the nucleic acid with a purple backbone represents a mature mRNA transcript. Canonical processing includes dysregulation of a wild-type protein via splicing an ectopic UTR to a wild-type coding sequence, splicing of two in-frame coding sequences to produce a novel protein, and splicing into long noncoding RNA. (b) Chimeric RNA as a template for DSB repair. Two possible mechanisms are presented: chimeric RNA can serve as a template to recruit two distant genomic loci into proximity; chimeric RNA can serve as a homologous template for translocation of two distant genomic loci. (c) Chimeric RNA as ceRNA. Chimeric transcripts retain sequence homology with parental genes, thus potentially retaining miRNA binding sites to compete for local miRNAs.