Figure 3.

tRNA-derived small RNAs (tDRs) and tRNA-derived fragment (tRFs) affect multiple pathways to regulate gene expression and cell fate. The m6A, m1A and m3C on tRNA can be demethylated by ALKBH1 and ALKBH3 while TRDMT1 catalyzes 5mC demethylation. Demethylated-tRNA is prone to the formation of tDRs/tRFs through dicer and angiogenin (AGN) pathways. The tDRs promote cancer cell proliferation through three possible mechanisms (green arrows). On the contrary, the red arrow shows the modulation of invasion and metastatic lung colonization through tDRs-YBX1 binding, which tends to suppress oncogenic transcripts.