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Research Paper|Volume 15, Issue 24|pp 15489—15503

Identification and characterization of extrachromosomal circular DNA in age-related osteoporosis

Qingrun Zhu1, Rudong Chen1, Mingjie Kuang3, Wen Zhang1, Dachuan Wang2, Shijie Han1
  • 1Department of Orthopedics, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan 250014, Shandong, China
  • 2Department of Orthopedics, The Second Hospital, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan 250033, Shandong, China
  • 3Department of Orthopedics, Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong University, Jinan 250014, Shandong, China
* Equal contribution and share first authorship
Received: August 15, 2023Accepted: November 6, 2023Published: December 29, 2023
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.205388

Copyright: © 2023 Zhu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Extrachromosomal circular DNA (eccDNA) was once thought to mainly exist in tumour cells, although it was later shown to be ubiquitous in healthy tissues as well. However, the characteristics and properties of eccDNA in healthy tissue or non-cancer tissue are not well understood. This study first analyses the properties, possible formation mechanisms and potential functions of eccDNA in osteoporotic or normal bone tissue. We used circle-seq to demonstrate the expression spectrum of the eccDNA in the bone tissue. A bioinformatics analysis was performed for the differentially expressed eccDNA, and it enriched the Hippo signalling pathway, PI3K-Akt signalling pathway, Ras signal-ling pathway and other signalling pathways that are closely related to osteoporosis (OP). Then, we used real-time polymerase chain reaction and Sanger sequencing to assess human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells and obtained the base sequence of the eccDNA cyclization site. Overall, eccDNAs in bone tissue are common and may play a significant role in pathways connected to age-related osteoporosis progression.