Abstract
Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a highly abundant, highly conserved class of non-coding RNAs that are believed to play a role in regulating gene expression through modulation of linear mRNA production as well as through interactions with microRNAs and RNA binding proteins. Given that circRNAs transcripts have been shown to accumulate with age and that many such transcripts are either enriched or exclusively expressed in neuronal tissue, it has been proposed that circRNAs may play a role in the progression of neurological disease. Here I generate and characterize several transgenic models of neurodegenerative disease in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. I then identify a number of neuronally abundant circRNA transcripts that exhibit differential expression in these disease models, in particular in models of polyglutamine-repeat disorders such as Huntington’s disease and spinocerebellar ataxia.