Integrative discovery and functional dependency mapping uncover essential chimeric RNAs in the active transcriptome.

An atlas of 569,640 chimeric RNAs across 1,019 cancer cell lines identifies high-confidence functional chimeras, including recurrent cis-spliced adjacent-gene transcripts.

• Why it matters: Expression of chimeric RNAs is known across tissues and disease, but their biological roles and which ones are functionally required remain unclear.
• What they did: The study built an integrative prediction pipeline for chimeric RNAs and combined it with The Cancer Dependency Map perturbation datasets to run a functional dependency screen.
• The result: Depleting selected candidate chimeras disrupts cell cycle progression and cellular fitness, and these transcripts are frequently dysregulated in primary breast tumors.

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