m6Aexpress-Reader: Prediction of m6A regulated expression genes by integrating m6A sites and reader binding information in specific- context

N-6-methyladenosine (m(6)A) is the most abundant form of mRNA modification and plays an important role in regulating gene expression. However, the mechanisms of m(6)A regulated gene expression in cell or condition specific, are still poorly understood. Even though, some methods are able to predict m(6)A regulated expression (m(6)A-reg-exp) genes in specific context, they don't introduce the m(6)A reader binding information, while this information can help to predict m(6)A-reg-exp genes and more clearly to explain the mechanisms of m(6)A-mediated gene expression process. Thus, by integrating m(6)A sites and reader binding information, we proposed a novel method (called m(6)Aexpress-Reader) to predict m(6)A-reg-exp genes from limited MeRIP-seq data in specific context. m(6)Aexpress-Reader adopts the reader binding signal strength to weight the posterior distribution of the estimated regulatory coefficients for enhancing the prediction power. By using m(6)Aexpress-Reader, we found the complex characteristic of m(6)A on gene expression regulation and the distinct regulated pattern of m(6)A-reg-exp genes with different reader binding. m(6)A readers, YTHDF2 or IGF2BP1/3 all play an important role in various cancers and the key cancer pathways. In addition, m(6)Aexpress-Reader reveals the distinct m(6)A regulated mode of reader targeted genes in cancer. m(6)Aexpress-Reader could be a useful tool for studying the m(6)A regulation on reader target genes in specific context and it can be freely accessible at: https://github.com/NWPU-903PR/m6AexpressReader.