Compared with 72 normal kidney tissue in TCGA dataset, 5 out of 16 genes (ZC3H13, METTL14, YTHDF2, YTHDF3 and HNRNPA2B1) showed significantly lower expression level (p < 0.05) in 539 ccRCC tissues, while 7 genes (YTHDC2, FTO, WTAP, METTL3, ALKBH5, RBM15 and KIAA1429) represented relatively high expression (p < 0.05) (Fig. 1a and b). This evidence concerns the gene METTL3 and nonpapillary renal cell carcinoma.