N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is the most prevalent internal (non-cap) modification present in the messenger RNA (mRNA) of all higher eukaryotes1,2. Although essential to cell viability and development3–5, the exact role of m6A modification remains to be determined. The recent discovery of two m6A demethylases in mammalian cells highlighted the importance of m6A in basic biological functions and disease6–8. Here we show that m6A is selectively recognized by the human YTH domain family 2 (YTHDF2) protein to regulate mRNA degradation. We identified over 3,000 cellular RNA targets of YTHDF2, most of which are mRNAs, but which also include non-coding RNAs, with a conserved core motif of G(m6A)C. We further establish the role of YTHDF2 in RNA metabolism, showing that binding of YTHDF2 results in the localization of bound mRNA from the translatable pool to mRNA decay sites, such as processing bodies9. The C-terminal domain of YTHDF2 selectively binds to m6A-containing mRNA whereas the N-terminal domain is responsible for the localization of the YTHDF2-mRNA complex to cellular RNA decay sites. Our results indicate that the dynamic m6A modification is recognized by selective-binding proteins to affect the translation status and lifetime of mRNA.

RNA-binding proteins control many aspects of cellular biology through binding single-stranded RNA binding motifs (RBM)1-3. However, RBMs can be buried within their local RNA structures4-7, thus inhibiting RNA-protein interactions. N6-methyladenosine (m6A), the most abundant and dynamic internal modification in eukaryotic messenger RNA8-19, can be selectively recognized by the YTHDF2 protein to affect the stability of cytoplasmic mRNAs15, but how m6A achieves wide-ranging physiological significance needs further exploration. Here we show that m6A controls the RNA-structure-dependent accessibility of RBMs to affect RNA-protein interactions for biological regulation; we term this mechanism “m6A-switch”. We found that m6A alters the local structure in mRNA and long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) to facilitate binding of heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein C (hnRNP C), an abundant nuclear RNA-binding protein responsible for pre-mRNA processing20-24. Combining PAR-CLIP and m6A/MeRIP approaches enabled us to identify 39,060 m6A-switches among hnRNP C binding sites; and global m6A reduction decreased hnRNP C binding at 2,798 high confidence m6A-switches. We determined that these m6A-switch-regulated hnRNP C binding activities affect the abundance as well as alternative splicing of target mRNAs, demonstrating the regulatory role of m6A-switches on gene expression and RNA maturation. Our results illustrate how RNA-binding proteins gain regulated access to their RBMs through m6A-dependent RNA structural remodeling, and provide a new direction for investigating RNA-modification-coded cellular biology.

The classical RNA secondary structure model considers A.U and G.C Watson-Crick as well as G.U wobble base pairs. Here we substitute it for a new one, in which sets of nucleotide cyclic motifs define RNA structures. This model allows us to unify all base pairing energetic contributions in an effective scoring function to tackle the problem of RNA folding. We show how pipelining two computer algorithms based on nucleotide cyclic motifs, MC-Fold and MC-Sym, reproduces a series of experimentally determined RNA three-dimensional structures from the sequence. This demonstrates how crucial the consideration of all base-pairing interactions is in filling the gap between sequence and structure. We use the pipeline to define rules of precursor microRNA folding in double helices, despite the presence of a number of presumed mismatches and bulges, and to propose a new model of the human immunodeficiency virus-1 -1 frame-shifting element.