An Informatics Pipeline for Profiling and Annotating RNA Modifications.

While over 150 distinct types of chemical modifications are known to occur on various cellular RNAs and can be dynamically controlled, the function of most of these modifications remains poorly defined. Collectively, these RNA modifications have been recently termed the "epitranscriptome". Identification and annotation of individual RNA modifications throughout the transcriptome are key for studying the role of the epitranscriptome in the regulation of gene expression and for elucidating the functional relevance of particular RNA modifications in diverse physiological and disease processes. In this protocol, we demonstrate how to identify and annotate RNA modifications based on the informatic analysis of methylated RNA immunoprecipitation and sequencing (MeRIP-seq) data, using RNAmod, a convenient one-stop online interactive platform for the annotation, analysis, and visualization of mRNA modifications.