METTL16 and intervertebral disk degenerative disorder: To investigate the function of MAT2A and METTL16 in the apoptosis of NPCs and finally their role in the pathogenesis of disc degeneration, we downregulated the expression of MAT2A in NPCs with small interfering RNA (siRNA) while upregulated the expression of METTL16 in the NPCs with lentivirus.