• Yanwen Liang, Guankai Zhan, Kao-Jung Chang, Yi-Ping Yang, Lingfang Wang, Jiebo Lin, and Chih-Hung Hsu.
• Department of Life Sciences and Institute of Genomic Sciences, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC.
• J Chin Med Assoc. 2020 Mar 1; 83 (3): 221-226.

AbstractLike DNA and proteins, RNA is subject to numerous (over 160) covalent modifications which play critical roles to regulate RNA metabolism. Among these modifications, N-methyladenosine (mA) is the most prevalent RNA methylation on mRNA which occurs on around 25% of transcripts. The recent studies demonstrated that mA participates in many aspects of RNA processing, including splicing, nuclear exporting, translation, stabilization, etc. Therefore, it revealed a new layer of regulatory mechanism for gene expression and has been termed "RNA Epigenetics" or "Epitranscriptomics". RNA mA is regulated and exerts its functions by three groups of "mA RNA modifiers" including mA methyltransferases (writers), mA demethylases (erasers), and mA binding proteins (readers). In this review, we would summarize and discuss the current understandings of the roles of the conventional mA RNA modifiers in human cancers.

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