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
. 2011 Sep-Oct;2(5):611-31.
doi: 10.1002/wrna.79. Epub 2011 Mar 23.

RNA nucleotide methylation

Yuri Motorin  1 , Mark Helm
Affiliations
Review

RNA nucleotide methylation

Yuri Motorin et al. Wiley Interdiscip Rev RNA. 2011 Sep-Oct.

Abstract

Methylation of RNA occurs at a variety of atoms, nucleotides, sequences and tertiary structures. Strongly related to other posttranscriptional modifications, methylation of different RNA species includes tRNA, rRNA, mRNA, tmRNA, snRNA, snoRNA, miRNA, and viral RNA. Different catalytic strategies are employed for RNA methylation by a variety of RNA-methyltransferases which fall into four superfamilies. This review outlines the different functions of methyl groups in RNA, including biophysical, biochemical and metabolic stabilization of RNA, quality control, resistance to antibiotics, mRNA reading frame maintenance, deciphering of normal and altered genetic code, selenocysteine incorporation, tRNA aminoacylation, ribotoxins, splicing, intracellular trafficking, immune response, and others. Connections to other fields including gene regulation, DNA repair, stress response, and possibly histone acetylation and exocytosis are pointed out. WIREs RNA 2011 2 611-631 DOI: 10.1002/wrna.79 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources