Abstract
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in plant growth, development, and response to environment. For identifying and comparing miRNAs and their targets in seed development between two maize inbred lines (i.e. PH6WC and PH4CV), two sRNAs and two degradome libraries were constructed. Through high-throughput sequencing and miRNA identification, 55 conserved and 24 novel unique miRNA sequences were identified in two sRNA libraries; moreover, through degradome sequencing and analysis, 137 target transcripts corresponding to 38 unique miRNA sequences were identified in two degradome libraries. Subsequently, 16 significantly differentially expressed miRNA sequences were verified by qRT-PCR, in which 9 verified sequences obviously target 30 transcripts mainly involved with regulation in flowering and development in embryo. Therefore, the results suggested that some miRNAs (e.g. miR156, miR171, miR396 and miR444) related reproductive development might differentially express in seed development between the PH6WC and PH4CV maize inbred lines in this present study.
Highlights
MicroRNAs are a class of endogenous, small RNAs (21–24 nt) that regulate gene expression in plants and animals at the post-transcriptional level by translational repression, target degradation and gene silencing [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
A total of 55 known unique miRNA sequences corresponding to 103 miRNAs were identified as conserved miRNAs, in which the miRNA sequences belonging to maize miRbase were identified as conserved known miRNAs and the sequences belonging to the selected Gramineae miRbase were identified as conserved novel miRNAs (S3 Table)
For expression comparison between the PH6WC and PH4CV libraries, unique miRNA sequences were analyzed through Log2(ratio) test and Chi-square 2×2 tests based on their normalized reads (Fig 2a, S3 Table)
Summary
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of endogenous, small RNAs (21–24 nt) that regulate gene expression in plants and animals at the post-transcriptional level by translational repression, target degradation and gene silencing [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Plant miRNAs play an important role in various processes associated with organ polarity, developmental transitions, auxin signaling, leaf and stem growth, floral organ identity, reproductive development and stress response [3,4, 7,8,9,10,11,12]. Plenty of miRNA families have been discovered in plants [17–. Comparison of miRNAs and Their Targets in Seed Development between Two Maize Inbred Lines. With the application of degradome sequencing, miRNA targets in plants can be confirmed on a large scale [17,18,19,20]. Identification of miRNAs and their targets in diverse species have been a focus in recent years
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