Circular RNA Databases

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a class of endogenous ncRNAs with covalently closed-loop structures, lacking of 5' caps and 3' tails. These novel ncRNAs are ubiquitously expressing in eukaryotes, exhibiting expression patterns of specific cell types, tissues, or developmental stages. CircRNAs have been reported to play important roles in various biological processes, such as regulating gene expression at transcriptional or post-transcriptional levels, modulating alternative splicing, and interacting with miRNAs or proteins. With the increasing amount of circRNA data, several databases have been established to organize and manage this information, such as circBase, CIRCpedia, CircAtlas, circRNADb, PlantCircNet, and CircFunBase. These diverse databases will help to explore circRNA characterization, and further investigate circRNA functions. In this chapter, we give a brief overview of the existing circRNA databases and focus on plant circRNA databases, introducing their key features.