The dynamics of N 6 -methyladenine RNA modification in interactions between rice and plant viruses.

Background: N ⁶ -methyladenosine (m ⁶ A) is the most common RNA modification in eukaryotes and has been implicated as a novel epigenetic marker that is involved in various biological processes. The pattern and functional dissection of m ⁶ A in the regulation of several major human viral diseases have already been reported. However, the patterns and functions of m ⁶ A distribution in plant disease bursting remain largely unknown.
Results: We analyse the high-quality m ⁶ A methylomes in rice plants infected with two devastating viruses. We find that the m ⁶ A methylation is mainly associated with genes that are not actively expressed in virus-infected rice plants. We also detect different m ⁶ A peak distributions on the same gene, which may contribute to different antiviral modes between rice stripe virus or rice black-stripe dwarf virus infection. Interestingly, we observe increased levels of m ⁶ A methylation in rice plant response to virus infection. Several antiviral pathway-related genes, such as RNA silencing-, resistance-, and fundamental antiviral phytohormone metabolic-related genes, are also m ⁶ A methylated. The level of m ⁶ A methylation is tightly associated with its relative expression levels.
Conclusions: We revealed the dynamics of m ⁶ A modification during the interaction between rice and viruses, which may act as a main regulatory strategy in gene expression. Our investigations highlight the significance of m ⁶ A modifications in interactions between plant and viruses, especially in regulating the expression of genes involved in key pathways.