Exposure to bisphenol A affects transcriptome-wide N6-methyladenine methylation in ovarian granulosa cells

Bisphenol A (BPA) is an endocrine disruptor of potential reproductive toxicities. Increasingly research elucidated that BPA exposure to the environment would change the epigenetic modifications of transcriptome, but the mechanism by which BPA affects m6A methylation in interfering with female reproductive health remains uncertain. Therefore, this study preliminarily proposed and tested the hypothesis that BPA exposure alters the m6A modification level in transcripts in female ovarian granulosa cells. After BPA was exposed to granulosa cells for 24 h, RNA methylation related regulatory genes (such as METTL3, METTL14, ALKBH5, FTO) and the global m6A levels showed significant differences. Next, we applied MERIP-seq analysis to obtain information on the genome-wide m6A modification changes and identified 1595 differentially methylated mRNA transcripts, and 50 differentially methylated lncRNA transcripts. Further joint analysis of gene common expression showed that 33 genes were hypermethylated and up-regulated, 71 were hypermethylated and down-regulated, 49 were hypomethylated and up-regulated, and 20 were hypomethylated and down-regulated. Enriched Gene Ontology (GO) and biological pathway analysis revealed that these unique genes were mainly enriched in lipid metabolism, cell proliferation, and apoptosis related pathways. Six of these genes (mRNAs IMPA1, MCOLN1, DCTN3, BRCA2, and lncRNAs MALAT1, XIST) were validated using RT-qPCR and IGV software. Through comprehensive analysis of epitranscriptome and protein-protein interaction (PPI) data, lncRNAs MALAT1 and XIST are expected to serve as new markers for BPA interfering with the female reproductive system. In brief, these data show a novel and necessary connection between the damage of BPA exposure on female ovarian granulosa cells and RNA methylation modification.