Targeted Quantitative Profiling of Epitranscriptomic Reader, Writer, and Eraser Proteins Using Stable Isotope-Labeled Peptides.

Abstract

N6-Methyladenosine (m6A) and its reader, writer, and eraser (RWE) proteins assume crucial roles in regulating the splicing, stability, and translation of mRNA. Aside from m6A, RNA is known to carry many other types of chemical modifications; no systematic investigations, however, have been conducted about the crosstalk between m6A and other modified nucleosides in RNA. Here, we modified our recently established liquid chromatography-parallel-reaction monitoring (LC-PRM) method by incorporating stable isotope-labeled (SIL) peptides as internal or surrogate standards for profiling epitranscriptomic RWE proteins. We were able to detect reproducibly a total of 114 RWE proteins in HEK293T cells with the genes encoding m6A eraser proteins (i.e., ALKBH5, FTO) and the catalytic subunit of the major m6A writer complex (i.e., METTL3) being individually ablated. Notably, eight proteins, including writer proteins for 5-methylcytidine and pseudouridine, were altered by more than 1.5-fold in the opposite directions in HEK293T cells depleted of METTL3 and ALKBH5. Analysis of previously published m6A mapping results revealed the presence of m6A in the corresponding mRNAs for four of these proteins. Together, we integrated SIL peptides into our LC-PRM method for quantifying epitranscriptomic RWE proteins, and our work revealed potential crosstalks between m6A and other epitranscriptomic modifications. Our modified LC-PRM method with the use of SIL peptides should be applicable for high-throughput profiling of epitranscriptomic RWE proteins in other cell types and in tissues.