Fig. 5.

METTL17 is required for global mitochondrial translation in mitochondrial RNA methylation manner in CRC.

A. GO enrichment analysis revealed that the top 100 METTL17 DepMap co-dependent genes predominantly associated with mitochondria, influencing the regulation of mitochondrial gene expression and mitochondrial translation. The bar plot illustrated enrichments in multiple mitochondria-related gene sets (left), while the visualized network highlighted the close connections among these gene sets (right). BP, biological process. CC, cellular component. MF, molecular function.

B and C. Knockdown of METTL17 down-regulated the protein expression of mitochondrial coding genes in CRC cells detected by Western blot (B). Semi-quantitative analysis of the relative protein levels was performed and visualized in the heatmap of fold change, normalized to Scramble (C).

D and E. The quality of mitochondrial RNA from RKO cells was identified by agarose gel assay (D). HPLC-MS analysis of mitochondrial RNA showed that knockdown of METTL17 significantly reduced m⁴C, m⁵C, m³C, m⁷G, and m⁶A levels within mitochondrial RNA methylations in RKO cells (E). Relative levels were quantified by comparing to scramble, n = 3 per group.

Data are shown as mean ± SD. **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 compared to Scramble group, based on a two-sided Student's t-test.