Alteration of m⁶A epitranscriptomic tagging of ribonucleic acids after spinal cord injury in mice

The m⁶A methylation is reported to function in multiple physiological and pathological processes. However, the functional relevance of m⁶A modification to post-spinal cord injured (SCI) damage is not yet clear. In the present study, methylated RNA immunoprecipitation combined with microarray analysis showed that the global RNA m⁶A levels were decreased following SCI. Then, gene ontology (GO) and kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG) analyses were conducted to demonstrate the potential function of differential m⁶A-tagged transcripts and the altered transcripts with differential m⁶A levels. In addition, we found that the m⁶A "writer," METTL3, significantly decreased after SCI in mice. The immunostaining validated that the expression of METTL3 mainly changed in GFAP or Iba-1⁺ cells. Together, this study shows the alteration of m⁶A modification following SCI in mice, which might contribute to the pathophysiology of the spinal cord after trauma.