Stress granules (SGs) are membrane-less condensates composed of RNA and protein that assemble in response to stress stimuli and disassemble when stress is lifted. Both assembly and disassembly are tightly controlled processes, yet, it remains elusive whether mRNAs in SGs completely recover for translation following stress relief. Using RNA-seq of translating fractions in human cell line, we found that higher fraction of the m6A-modified mRNAs recovered for translation compared to unmodified mRNAs, i.e. 95% vs 84%, respectively. Considering structural mRNA analysis, we found that the m6A modification enhances structuring at nucleotides in its close vicinity. Our results suggest that SG-sequestered mRNAs disassemble nearly completely from SGs and the m6A modification may display some advantage to the mRNAs in their recovery for translation likely by m6A-driven structural stabilization.
Keywords: deep sequencing; m6A modification; mRNA; mRNA structure; stress granules; translation.