Thyroid carcinoma is one of the most prevalent human malignancies, and its incidence has significantly increased over the past 10 years [
1]. According to the histological characteristics, thyroid carcinoma can be classified into four types, including anaplastic, follicular, medullary, and papillary thyroid carcinoma [
2]. Although thyroid cancer has been considered a disease with favorable outcome, the patients with advanced thyroid carcinoma have a poor 5-year survival rate [
3,
4]. Therefore, it is important to identify effective diagnostic markers, prognostic indicator and therapeutic targets for thyroid carcinoma treatment.
N6-Methyladenosine (m6A), a modification occurs at the N6 position of RNA adenine (A), is the most abundant modification on RNA molecules. m6A was first discovered in 1974 [
5], occurring in various types of RNAs, including mRNA, tRNA, snRNA, and long noncoding RNA [
6]. The m6A methylation is the most prevalent and well recognized modification among all RNA modifications. Similar to DNA methylation, m6A methylation regulates the post-transcriptional expression of target RNAs by affecting RNA alternative splicing, stability, nuclear export, mRNA decay, and translation [
7‐
10]. Its regulatory effects are mediated by the dynamic and reversible interactions among methyltransferases (“writers”), demethylase (“erasers”) and RNA-binding proteins (“readers”), which can add, remove, and recognize m6A-modified sites and generate different functions [
11]. Methyltransferases, known as the “writers”, are composed of METTL3/14/, RBM15, WTAP, KIAA1429, and ZC3H13, regulating the process of methylated modification of RNA. Demethylase, which are considered m6A “erasers”, consist of FTO and ALKBH5, mediating the demethylation process of RNA. RNA-binding proteins, known as m6A “readers”, recognize RNA methylated information and participate in the translation and degradation of downstream RNA, including YTHDC1, YTHDC2, YTHDF1, YTHDF2, and HNRNPC. Increasing studies have shown that abnormal m6A modification plays an important role during tumorigenesis and progression in a variety types of human cancers, including oral squamous cell carcinoma [
12], acute myeloid leukemia (AML) [
13,
14], glioblastoma [
15], hepatocellular carcinoma [
16], pancreatic cancer [
17] and breast cancer [
18]. However, the association between m6A RNA modification regulators and thyroid carcinoma remains unknown.
In present study, we identified that 13 were abnormally expressed in thyroid carcinoma tissues compared to those m6A RNA methylation regulators in normal tissues from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) thyroid carcinoma database. Based on the signature of 13 m6A genes, we divided patients into two clusters by consensus clustering method and compared the clinical outcomes of two clusters. Via Cox univariate analysis, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression analysis was employed to construct a prognostic gene signature with three m6A methylation regulatory genes. The differences in the biological pathways were also explored by Kyoto Encyclopedia Genes and Genomes (KEGG), Gene Ontology (GO) and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) between subgroups with different prognosis. Our results emphasized the significance of m6A methylation-related genes in thyroid cancer and established a prognostic gene signature for predicting the prognosis in patients with thyroid cancer. Finally, biological experiments in vitro confirmed that downregulation of the m6A RNA methylation regulators involved in the model could significantly influence the proliferation and migration of thyroid cancer cells.