Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2022 Jun;49(6):4929-4941.
doi: 10.1007/s11033-022-07126-5. Epub 2022 Jan 13.

Advances in the functional roles of N6-methyladenosine modification in cancer progression: mechanisms and clinical implications

Peilin Chen #  1   2 , Jianhang Hu #  1   2 , Xiaodong Han  3   4 , Yabing Chen  5   6
Affiliations
Review

Advances in the functional roles of N6-methyladenosine modification in cancer progression: mechanisms and clinical implications

Peilin Chen et al. Mol Biol Rep. 2022 Jun.

Abstract

N6-methyladenosine (m6A), the methylation targeting the N6 position of adenosine, is the most common internal modification of mRNA in eukaryotes. Considering the roles of m6A in regulating gene expression, the investigation of m6A roles in the biological processes including cell renewal, differentiation, apoptosis, and invasion of cancer cells has become a hot research topic. There are three kinds of protein involved in m6A regulation. The methyltransferases and demethylases cooperatively regulate the m6A levels, while the m6A reading proteins recognize the m6A sites and mediate multiple m6A-dependent biological functions including mRNA splicing, transfer, translation, and degradation. At present, a large number of studies have found that the changes of m6A levels in tumor cells play a very important role in the occurrence and development of tumors, as well as metastasis and invasion of tumor cells. This review summarizes the different roles of m6A modification in the occurrence and development of various cancers, and discusses the possibility of choosing the m6A related proteins as potential therapeutic targets.

Keywords: Cancers; Clinical implications; Functional roles; N6-methyladenosine.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Boccaletto P, Machnicka MA, Purta E, Piatkowski P, Baginski B, Wirecki TK, de Crecy-Lagard V, Ross R, Limbach PA, Kotter A, Helm M, Bujnicki JM (2018) MODOMICS: a database of RNA modification pathways. Nucleic Acids Res 46(D1):D303–D307. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkx1030 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bodi Z, Bottley A, Archer N, May ST, Fray RG (2015) Yeast m6A methylated mRNAs are enriched on translating ribosomes during meiosis, and under rapamycin treatment. PLoS ONE 10(7):e0132090. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132090 - DOI - PubMed - PMC
    1. Zhang SY, Zhang SW, Fan XN, Zhang T, Meng J, Huang Y (2019) FunDMDeep-m6A: identification and prioritization of functional differential m6A methylation genes. Bioinformatics 35(14):i90–i98. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btz316 - DOI - PubMed - PMC
    1. Meyer KD, Saletore Y, Zumbo P, Elemento O, Mason CE, Jaffrey SR (2012) Comprehensive analysis of mRNA methylation reveals enrichment in 3’ UTRs and near stop codons. Cell 149(7):1635–1646. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2012.05.003 - DOI - PubMed - PMC
    1. Deng X, Su R, Weng H, Huang H, Li Z, Chen J (2018) RNA N(6)-methyladenosine modification in cancers: current status and perspectives. Cell Res 28(5):507–517. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41422-018-0034-6 - DOI - PubMed - PMC

LinkOut - more resources