RNA N6-Methyladenine Modification, Cellular Reprogramming, and Cancer Stemness

Huarong Chen; Yifei Wang; Hao Su; Xiaoting Zhang; Hongyan Chen; Jun Yu

doi:10.3389/fcell.2022.935224

RNA N⁶-Methyladenine Modification, Cellular Reprogramming, and Cancer Stemness

Front Cell Dev Biol. 2022 Jul 4:10:935224. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2022.935224. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Huarong Chen^{1

2}, Yifei Wang³, Hao Su^{1

2}, Xiaoting Zhang^{1

2}, Hongyan Chen^{1

2}, Jun Yu²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care and Peter Hung Pain Research Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
² Institute of Digestive Disease and Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, State Key Laboratory of Digestive Disease, Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences, CUHK Shenzhen Research Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
³ Department of Anatomical and Cellular Pathology, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Prince of Wales Hospital, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.

Abstract

N⁶-Methyladenosine (m⁶A) is the most abundant modification on eukaryote messenger RNA and plays a key role in posttranscriptional regulation of RNA metabolism including splicing, intracellular transport, degradation, and translation. m⁶A is dynamically regulated by methyltransferases (writers), RNA-binding proteins (readers), and demethylases (erasers). Recent studies demonstrate that perturbation of m⁶A regulators remarkably influences cell fate transitions through rewiring various biological processes, such as growth, differentiation, and survival. Moreover, aberrant m⁶A modification is implicated in a variety of diseases, in particular cancer. In this review, we describe the functional linkage of m⁶A modifications to cellular reprogramming and cancer stemness properties.

Keywords: N6-methyladenose; RNA metabolism; reprogramming; stemness; tumorigenesis.

Publication types

Review