CircMIB2 therapy can effectively treat pathogenic infection by encoding a novel protein

Abstract

The mRNA therapy is widely used in the treatment of diseases due to its efficient characteristics, and the COVID-19 vaccine is the application of mRNA therapy. However, due to the instability of mRNA, mRNA vaccines often need lots of modifications to ensure its stability. Recent research shows that circRNA with stable RNA structure can encode protein, which provides a new direction for mRNA therapy. Here, we discovered a novel circRNA (circMIB2) derived from E3 ubiquitin-protein ligase MIB2 (MIB2) gene in lower vertebrate fish, which can translate into a 134 amino acid protein (MIB2-134aa) through m⁶A modification, and is involved in innate immunity. MIB2-134aa is completely consistent with the amino acid sequence of the two domains of host gene MIB2 protein; host gene MIB2 can target TRAF6 through the two domains and inhibit the innate immune response by promoting the ubiquitination degradation of the K11-link of TRAF6, MIB2-134aa also targets TRAF6 through these same domains. Interestingly, MIB2-134aa greatly reduced the degradation of TRAF6 by its host gene MIB2. More importantly, we found that circRNA therapy of circMIB2 can significantly inhibit the colonization of Vibrio anguillarum in zebrafish, and it provides a new direction for the treatment of pathogenic diseases of fish.