Human embryonic stem cells (hESC) epitranscriptome forms epitranslatome and translation profiles

Methylation of m6A mRNA is involved in important regulatory functions such as proper splicing, translation initiation, and translation arrest. Recently, quite a lot of information has been accumulated on transcriptome methylation, but few people have mentioned methylation in the context of the translatome. To study the effect of m6A methylation on translation, we obtained the translatome and transcriptome profiles for the same human embryonic stem cell samples on the Oxford Nanopore sequencing platform. About 42% of expressed splice-forms were detected at the translatome level. The m6A modification was detected in about 50% of transcripts at the transcriptome level, but only in 3% (476 transcripts) at the translatome level. In the translatome, 106 m6A-modified transcripts were detected, which were not found in the transcriptome. Comparison of epitranslatome data with ribosomal pause sites obtained from Ribo-seq data showed that methylation plays an important role in the regulation of translation rate.

This work was supported by RSF No.24-14-0006.