Antibody cross-reactivity accounts for widespread appearance of m1A in 5’UTRs

Abstract

N 1-methyladenosine (m1A) was recently reported as a new mRNA modification but its prevalence has been controversial. Here the authors showed that m1A, if present in mRNA, is at very low stoichiometry, with the notable exception of MT-ND5. Further, they show that the previously reported enrichment of m1A near the start of transcripts are false-positive identifications due to cross-reactivity of the commonly used m1A antibody with mRNA caps.