Abstract
In recent years, major breakthroughs in RNA-modification-mediated regulation of gene expression have been made, leading to the emerging field of epitranscriptomics.Our understanding of the distribution, regulation and function of these dynamic RNA modifications is based on sequencing technologies. In this Review, we focus on the major mRNA modifications in the transcriptome of eukaryotic cells: N6-methyladenosine, N6, 2′-O-dimethyladenosine, 5-methylcytidine, 5-hydroxylmethylcytidine, inosine, pseudouridine and N1-methyladenosine. We discuss the sequencing technologies used to profile these epitranscriptomic marks, including scale, resolution, quantitative feature, pre-enrichment capability and the corresponding bioinformatics tools. We also discuss the challenges of epitranscriptome profiling and highlight the prospect of future detection tools. We aim to guide the choice of different detection methods and inspire new ideas in RNA biology.
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Change history
10 February 2017
In the version of this article initially published, author affiliation numbers were incorrect. Xiaoyu Li originally had affiliation 1; this has been changed to affiliations 1 and 2. Xushen Xiong originally had affiliations 1 and 2; these have been changed to affiliations 1–3. Chengqi Yi originally had affiliations 1 and 3; these have been changed to affiliations 2 and 4. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.
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Acknowledgements
We thank all members of the Yi laboratory for their insights and discussions. This work was supported by the National Basic Research Foundation of China (grant nos. MOST2016YFC0900300 and 2014CB964900) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 21522201).
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Li, X., Xiong, X. & Yi, C. Epitranscriptome sequencing technologies: decoding RNA modifications. Nat Methods 14, 23–31 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.4110
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.4110
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