Abstract
Recent advances in methylated RNA immunoprecipitation followed by sequencing and mass spectrometry have revealed widespread chemical modifications on mRNAs. Methylation of RNA bases such as N6-methyladenosine (m6A) and 5-methylcytidine (m5C) is the most prevalent mRNA modifications found in eukaryotes. In recent years, cellular factors introducing, interpreting, and deleting specific methylation marks on mRNAs, designated as “writers (methyltransferase),” “readers (RNA-binding protein),” and “erasers (demethylase),” respectively, have been identified in plants and animals. An emerging body of evidence shows that methylation on mRNAs affects diverse aspects of RNA metabolism, including stability, splicing, nucleus-to-cytoplasm export, alternative polyadenylation, and translation. Although our understanding for roles of writers, readers, and erasers in plants is far behind that for their animal counterparts, accumulating reports clearly demonstrate that these factors are essential for plant growth and abiotic stress responses. This review emphasizes the crucial roles of epitranscriptomic modifications of RNAs in new layer of gene expression regulation during the growth and response of plants to abiotic stresses.
Highlights
Epigenetic regulation of gene expression via DNA methylation and histone modifications is an important strategy for living organisms to achieve fine-tuned regulation of developmental processes or responses to environmental cues
We reviewed multiple functions and potential significance of m6A RNA methylation in the development and response of plants to diverse abiotic stresses
Wobble positions 34 and 37 of the anticodon loop in tRNAs are the most frequently and diversely modified (Väre et al, 2017). These conserved modification patterns reflect the essential role of RNA methylation in ribosome structure and biogenesis, codon recognition and decoding, and translation initiation or elongation (Jackman and Alfonzo, 2013; Chou et al, 2017; Sloan et al, 2017; Väre et al, 2017)
Summary
Epigenetic regulation of gene expression via DNA methylation and histone modifications is an important strategy for living organisms to achieve fine-tuned regulation of developmental processes or responses to environmental cues. Recent advances in methylation RNA sequencing (Met RNA-seq) and deep RNA sequencing have revealed transcriptome-wide m6A methylation patterns in plants as well as in animals (Luo et al, 2014; Wang et al, 2015a; Cui et al, 2017) These modifications within mRNAs can affect multiple steps of transcript’s fate, including splicing (Haussmann et al, 2016; Xiao et al, 2016), nucleus-to-cytoplasm export (Zheng et al, 2013), RNA turnover (Du et al, 2016; Mauer et al, 2017; Wei et al, 2018), and translation (Meyer et al, 2015; Wang et al, 2015b; Choi et al, 2016)
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