Evolution of transcript modification by N6-methyladenosine in primates
- ↵* Corresponding author; email: kpwhite{at}uchicago.edu
Abstract
Phenotypic differences within populations and between closely related species are often driven by variation and evolution of gene expression (King and Wilson 1975; Romero et al. 2012; Villar et al. 2014). However, most analyses have focused on the effects of genomic variation at cis-regulatory elements such as promoters and enhancers that control transcriptional activity, and little is understood about the influence of post-transcriptional processes on transcript evolution. Post-transcriptional modification of RNA by N6-methyladenosine (m6A) has been shown to be widespread throughout the transcriptome (Desrosiers et al. 1974; Dominissini et al. 2012; Meyer et al. 2012), and this reversible mark (Jia et al. 2011; Zheng et al. 2013) can affect transcript stability and translation dynamics (Wang et al. 2014; Wang et al. 2015). Here we analyze m6A mRNA modifications in lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) from human, chimpanzee and rhesus, and we identify patterns of m6A evolution among species. We find that m6A evolution occurs in parallel with evolution of consensus RNA sequence motifs known to be associated with the enzymatic complexes that regulate m6A dynamics, and expression evolution of m6A-modified genes occurs in parallel with m6A evolution.
- Received July 8, 2016.
- Accepted December 19, 2016.
- Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
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