Abstract
BackgroundLong intergenic noncoding RNAs (lincRNAs) are endogenous non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) that are transcribed from ‘intergenic’ regions of the genome and may play critical roles in regulating gene expression through multiple RNA-mediated mechanisms. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are single-stranded small ncRNAs of approximately 21–24 nucleotide (nt) that are involved in transcriptional and post-transcriptional gene regulation. While miRNAs functioning as mRNA repressors have been studied in detail, the influence of miRNAs on lincRNAs has seldom been investigated in plants.MethodsLincRNAs as miRNA targets or decoys were predicted via GSTAr.pl script with a set of rules, and lincRNAs as miRNA targets were validated by degradome data. Conservation analysis of lincRNAs as miRNA targets or decoys were conducted using BLASTN and MAFFT. The function of lincRNAs as miRNA targets were predicted via a lincRNA-mRNA co-expression network, and the function of lincRNAs as miRNA decoys were predicted according to the competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) hypothesis.ResultsIn this work, we developed a computational method and systematically predicted 466 lincRNAs as 165 miRNA targets and 86 lincRNAs as 58 miRNA decoys in maize (Zea mays L.). Furthermore, 34 lincRNAs predicted as 33 miRNA targets were validated based on degradome data. We found that lincRNAs acting as miRNA targets or decoys are a common phenomenon, which indicates that the regulated networks of miRNAs also involve lincRNAs. To elucidate the function of lincRNAs, we reconstructed a miRNA-regulated network involving 78 miRNAs, 117 lincRNAs and 8834 mRNAs. Based on the lincRNA-mRNA co-expression network and the competing endogenous RNA hypothesis, we predicted that 34 lincRNAs that function as miRNA targets and 86 lincRNAs that function as miRNA decoys participate in cellular and metabolic processes, and play role in catalytic activity and molecular binding functions.ConclusionsThis work provides a comprehensive view of miRNA-regulated networks and indicates that lincRNAs can participate in a layer of regulatory interactions as miRNA targets or decoys in plants, which will enable in-depth functional analysis of lincRNAs.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-2024-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Long intergenic noncoding RNAs are endogenous non-coding RNAs that are transcribed from ‘intergenic’ regions of the genome and may play critical roles in regulating gene expression through multiple RNA-mediated mechanisms
Our research demonstrates that lincRNAs can act as miRNA targets or decoys to mediate the regulation of gene expression, and the annotation of lincRNA functions will facilitate the validation of the lincRNA functions in the future
After using the AgriGO toolkit to perform gene ontology (GO) analysis of mRNAs that could be targeted by the same miRNAs acting on lincRNAs [66], we found that lincRNAs acting as miRNA decoys were involved in multiple biological processes, participated in the formation of many cellular components, and influenced the activities of molecular functions (Fig. 9, Additional file 15)
Summary
Long intergenic noncoding RNAs (lincRNAs) are endogenous non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) that are transcribed from ‘intergenic’ regions of the genome and may play critical roles in regulating gene expression through multiple RNA-mediated mechanisms. Unlike lincRNAs, plant microRNAs (miRNAs) are approximately 21–24 nucleotide (nt) single-stranded, small non-coding RNAs that typically form near-perfect duplexes with their targets and mediate cleavage or translation repression at the post-transcriptional level [23, 24]. They play vital roles in regulating a broad range of biological metabolic processes, including roles in plant development, flowering time, leaf morphogenesis, hormone signaling and responses to environmental stresses, such as phosphate or/and sulfate stress [25,26,27,28,29,30]. In addition to protein-coding RNAs acting as miRNA targets, lincRNAs can be directly targeted by miRNAs for cleavage [19, 33,34,35]
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