Abstract
Host innate and adaptive immune responses play a vital role in clearing infected viruses. Meanwhile, viruses also evolve a series of mechanisms to weaken the host immune responses and evade immune defense. Recently, N6-methyladenosine (m6A), the most prevalent mRNA modification, has been revealed to regulate multiple steps of RNA metabolism, such as mRNA splicing, localization, stabilization, and translation, thus participating in many biological phenomena, including viral infection. In the process of virus–host interaction, the m6A modification that presents on the virus RNA impedes capture by the pattern recognition receptors, and the m6A modification appearing on the host immune-related molecules regulate interferon response, immune cell differentiation, inflammatory cytokine production, and other immune responses induced by viral infection. This review summarizes the research advances about the regulatory role of m6A modification in the innate and adaptive immune responses during viral infections.
Highlights
The discovery of modifications residing in DNA and histone proteins has proposed epigenetics, which provides a new perspective on regulation of gene expression and many other important biological processes
It is generally believed that the “write-in” of a methyl group to the N6 position of adenosine is catalyzed by the S-adenosyl-L-methionine (SAM)-dependent multisubunit methyltransferase complex composed of METTL3, METTL14, and other accessory components
The m6A modification occurs in fractional mRNA and in the consensus sequence, DRACH (D = A, G, or U; R = G or A; H = A, C or U) (Fu et al, 2014). m6A codes are interpreted through being bound by the particular m6A RNA-binding proteins, such as the YTH domain-containing proteins (YTHDC1-2, YTHDF1-3) (Wang et al, 2015)
Summary
The discovery of modifications residing in DNA and histone proteins has proposed epigenetics, which provides a new perspective on regulation of gene expression and many other important biological processes. Several studies have been published that show m6A modifications on different viruses, such as HBV, HCV, HIV-1, MeV, SeV, vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), have the same effect on the process of RIG-I recognition (Kim et al, 2020b; Chen et al, 2021; Li et al, 2021; Lu et al, 2021; Qiu et al, 2021) These studies detail that m6A-modified viral RNA recruited YTHDF2 and YTHDF3, and these reader proteins sequestered the viral RNA from RIG-I sensing (Kim et al, 2020b; Lu et al, 2021). Studies reveal that many aspects of the innate immune response, such as expression of IFN and ISG, inflammatory response, macrophage and DC maturation are all tightly controlled by m6A modification as a consequence to either improve the antiviral effects efficiently or weaken the immune response to prevent immunopathological damage
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