Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jan 21, 2018; 24(3): 323-337
Published online Jan 21, 2018. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v24.i3.323
circRNA_0046366 inhibits hepatocellular steatosis by normalization of PPAR signaling
Xing-Ya Guo, Fang Sun, Jian-Neng Chen, Yu-Qin Wang, Qin Pan, Jian-Gao Fan
Xing-Ya Guo, Fang Sun, Yu-Qin Wang, Qin Pan, Jian-Gao Fan, Department of Gastroenterology, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200092, China
Jian-Neng Chen, Department of Hepatology, Zhengxing Hospital, Zhangzhou 363000, Fujian Province, China
Jian-Gao Fan, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Children’s Digestion and Nutrition, Shanghai 200092, China
Author contributions: Pan Q and Fan JG should be as the co-corresponding authors; Guo XY, Sun F and Chen JN contributed equally to this paper; Pan Q and Fan JG conceived and designed the experiments; Guo XY and Sun F performed the experiments; Chen JN, Wang YQ and Pan Q analyzed the data; Pan Q wrote the paper.
Supported by National Key Research and Development Plan ‘Precision Medicine Research’, No. 2017YFSF090203; National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81070346, No. 81270492, No. 81470859, No. 81270491 and No. 81470840; State Key Development Program for Basic Research of China, No. 2012CB517501; 100 Talents Program, No. XBR2011007h; and Program of the Committee of Science and Technology, No. 09140903500.
Institutional review board statement: This paper was approved by the Xinhua Hospital Ethics Committee Affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No conflict of interest is declared for each author of the manuscript.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the authors at fanjiangao@xinhuamed.com.cn or panqin@xinhuamed.com.cn. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Qin Pan, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Gastroenterology, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Kongjiang Road NO 1665, Yangpu District, Shanghai 200092, China. panqin@xinhuamed.com.cn
Telephone: +86-21-25078999 Fax: +86-21-25077340
Received: October 7, 2017
Peer-review started: October 9, 2017
First decision: October 25, 2017
Revised: November 15, 2017
Accepted: November 27, 2017
Article in press: November 27, 2017
Published online: January 21, 2018
Processing time: 104 Days and 2.5 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: circRNA_0046366, which demonstrated expression loss in HepG2-based hepatocellular steatosis, exerts antagonistic effect on miR-34a activity. miR-34a inactivation abrogates its inhibitory role against peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR)α, and then rescues the PPARα level. PPARα restoration further improves the expression of downstream genes [i.e. carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1A (CPT1A) and solute-carrier family 27A (SLC27A)], at both transcriptional and translational levels, which are associated to triglyceride metabolism. In conclusion, the rebalancing of lipid homeostasis down-regulates triglyceride content, and attenuates the hepatocellular steatosis.