Rethinking m⁶A Readers, Writers, and Erasers

In recent years, m⁶A has emerged as an abundant and dynamically regulated modification throughout the transcriptome. Recent technological advances have enabled the transcriptome-wide identification of m⁶A residues, which in turn has provided important insights into the biology and regulation of this pervasive regulatory mark. Also central to our current understanding of m⁶A are the discovery and characterization of m⁶A readers, writers, and erasers. Over the last few years, studies into the function of these proteins have led to important discoveries about the regulation and function of m⁶A. However, during this time our understanding of these proteins has also evolved considerably, sometimes leading to the reversal of early concepts regarding the reading, writing and erasing of m⁶A. In this review, we summarize recent advances in m⁶A research, and we highlight how these new findings have reshaped our understanding of how m⁶A is regulated in the transcriptome.