FTO-Dependent m6A Regulates Cardiac Function During Remodeling and Repair

Background: Despite its functional importance in various fundamental bioprocesses, the studies of N6-methyladenosine (m6A) in the heart are lacking. Methods: We performed methylated (m6A) RNA immunoprecipitation sequencing (MeRIP-seq) to map transcriptome-wide m6A in healthy and failing hearts. Results: Improving expression of FTO in failing mouse hearts attenuated the ischemia-induced increase in m6A and decrease in cardiac contractile function. This is carried out by the demethylation activity of FTO, which selectively demethylates cardiac contractile transcripts Conclusion: Collectively, our study demonstrates the functional importance of FTO-dependent cardiac m6A methylome in cardiac contraction during heart failure and provides a novel mechanistic insight into the therapeutic mechanisms of FTO. MeRIP-seq was performed on total RNA extracted from 1 week post-MI mouse left ventricles using the Illumina HiSeq 2500 platform as 50bp single reads