Comprehensive analysis of mRNA methylation reveals enrichment in 3' UTRs and near stop codons

Methylation of the N(6) position of adenosine (m(6)A) is a posttranscriptional modification of RNA with poorly understood prevalence and physiological relevance. The recent discovery that FTO, an obesity risk gene, encodes an m(6)A demethylase implicates m(6)A as an important regulator of physiological processes. Here, we present a method for transcriptome-wide m(6)A localization, which combines m(6)A-specific methylated RNA immunoprecipitation with next-generation sequencing (MeRIP-Seq). We use this method to identify mRNAs of 7,676 mammalian genes that contain m(6)A, indicating that m(6)A is a common base modification of mRNA. The m(6)A modification exhibits tissue-specific regulation and is markedly increased throughout brain development. We find that m(6)A sites are enriched near stop codons and in 3' UTRs, and we uncover an association between m(6)A residues and microRNA-binding sites within 3' UTRs. These findings provide a resource for identifying transcripts that are substrates for adenosine methylation and reveal insights into the epigenetic regulation of the mammalian transcriptome.