Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.

Sec. Microbes and Innate Immunity

Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2025.1654185

This article is part of the Research TopicRNA Regulation Mechanisms in Microbial-Host InteractionsView all 4 articles

Comprehensive Profiling of Host-and Virus-Derived Circular RNAs During Vesicular Stomatitis Virus Infection

Provisionally accepted
Wenxia  YaoWenxia Yao1*Shanshan  MiaoShanshan Miao1Zesen  MaiZesen Mai1Lu  ZhuLu Zhu1Mingzhen  LinMingzhen Lin1Xinru  YangXinru Yang1Yezhenghong  QiuYezhenghong Qiu1Yi  WangYi Wang2*Zhaoyu  LiuZhaoyu Liu1*
  • 1Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China
  • 2Dongguan key laboratory for zoonitic diseases, Dongguan bioshine technology company, Dongguan City, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Circular RNA (circRNA) is a new member of noncoding RNA family, which has garnered increasing attention, particularly in the context of viral infections. Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) is a negative-sense RNA virus that threatens animal husbandry and currently lacks effective treatments. Despite extensive studies on VSV in basic research and medical applications, the systemic profiling of circRNAs in the context of VSV remains unexplored. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of circRNA profiles in VSV-infected Vero cells using high-throughput sequencing. We identified a total of 65,645 host-derived cellular circRNAs, of which 1,682 were differentially expressed. Trend clustering revealed three significant expression patterns, and functional annotation indicated that cluster 1 was associated with proviral pathways. Subsequent results showed that VSV infection elevated the top 10 cellular circRNAs, which in turn promoted VSV replication. Additionally, we identified 120 virus-derived circRNAs, top 10 of which were upregulated by VSV and enhanced VSV infection as well. We also characterized the general features of both cellular and viral circRNAs, including genomic locations and back-splicing signals. In summary, our findings revealed that both host cellular and viral circRNAs are induced by VSV infection, subsequently affecting VSV infection. This study unveils a previously unrecognized layer of virus-host interactions involving circRNAs, which may assist in the development of control strategies for VSV and its fundamental and medical applications.

Keywords: Vesicular stomatitis virus1, RNA-seq2, cellular circRNAs3, viral circRNAs4, differentially expressed circRNAs5

Received: 26 Jun 2025; Accepted: 03 Oct 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Yao, Miao, Mai, Zhu, Lin, Yang, Qiu, Wang and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Wenxia Yao, yaowenxia917@126.com
Yi Wang, wang_yi79@hotmail.com
Zhaoyu Liu, gywyer@gzhmu.edu.cn

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.