PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Susheel Sagar Bhat
AU  - Dawid Bielewicz
AU  - Natalia Grzelak
AU  - Tomasz Gulanicz
AU  - Zsuzsanna Bodi
AU  - Lukasz Szewc
AU  - Mateusz Bajczyk
AU  - Jakub Dolata
AU  - Dariusz J. Smolinski
AU  - Rupert G. Fray
AU  - Artur Jarmolowski
AU  - Zofia Szweykowska-Kulinska
TI  - mRNA adenosine methylase (MTA) deposits m<sup>6</sup>A on pri-miRNAs to modulate miRNA biogenesis in <em>Arabidopsis thaliana</em>
AID  - 10.1101/557900
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 557900
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/02/22/557900.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/02/22/557900.full
AB  - m6A, one of the most abundant mRNA modifications, has been associated with various metabolic processes in plants. Here we show that m6A also plays a role in miRNA biogenesis in Arabidopsis thaliana. Significant reductions in plant m6A/MTA levels results in lower accumulation of miRNAs whereas pri-miRNA levels tend to be higher in such plants. m6A-IP Seq and MTA-GFP RIP were used to show that many pri-miRNAs are m6A methylated and are bound by MTA, further demonstrating that pri-miRNAs can also be substrates for m6A methylation by MTA. We report that MTA interacts with RNA Pol II, supporting the assumption that m6A methylation is a co-transcriptional process, and also identify TGH, a known miRNA biogenesis related protein, as a novel protein that interacts with MTA. Finally, reduced levels of miR393b may partially explain the strong auxin insensitivity seen in Arabidopsis plants with reduced m6A levels.