Transcriptome-wide N6-methyladenine profiling in low input multiplex samples by a kit-free multi-barcode method

N6-methyladnine, which is the most abundant post-transcriptional RNA modification in eukaryotic mRNA, has been proved to be essential in various biological processes and related to numerous diseases. Transcriptome-wide m6A profiling by next generation sequencing is widely used to explore the distributions as well as quantity of m6A modifications. As traditional m6A-seq demands large amount of starting RNA which limited its application to clinical samples, we present a strategy of low input multi-barcode m6A-seq (SLIM-m6A-seq) to realize simplified m6A profiling of mixed clinical samples. This method maintains the advantages of preferable detection limit, low cost and simplified experiment procedures. Sequencing data of clinical blood samples from patients with diabetic myocardial infarction suggest that this method is practical in clinical application and m6A may play a critical role in the progression of diabetic cardiovascular complications. 91 samples are analysed (cell line data is mainly used to verify the reliability of the method, human peripheral blood samples and murine heart tissue are mainly used to apply the method to disease studies)