PRISMA flowchart
For this systematic review and meta-analysis, our discovery data cohort came from various databases including Cochrane library, EMBASE, and PubMed/MEDLINE from inception to Feb 20, 2020. Seventeen datasets of epitranscriptome-wide homo sapiens m6A sites under different cell lines screened by six different high-resolution profiling approaches were collected. Missing and ambiguous data were further ensured and validated by the original researchers (Figure 1).
Figure 1: PRISMA flowchart for inclusion or exclusion criteria in this meta-analysis We firstly retrieved our data (n=1555) from both GEO and GSA database. In this analysis, the primary focus was on Homo sapiens, we then exclude other unrelated species, like Mus musculus and Rattus norvegicus, our sample then restricted to 242. When explored in the full-text articles, we did not consider genes other than METTL3 or METTL14, therefore, genes like FTO, ALKBH5 and WTAP were excluded, and sample number was retained to 28. Owing to the fact that some experiments shared the same control group, we then eliminated the duplication and 17 samples remained. The remained samples were used to conduct the whole meta-analysis.