Project description:miRNAs are small non-coding regulatory RNAs that play important functions in the regulation of gene expression at the post-transcriptional level by targeting mRNAs for degradation or by inhibiting protein translation. Eugenia uniflora is a plant native to tropical America with pharmacological and ecological importance without previous studies about its gene expression and regulation. To date, there is not miRNAs reported in species of Myrtaceae. A small RNA library was constructed to identify miRNAs in Eugenia uniflora. Solexa technology was used to perform high throughput sequencing of the library and the data obtained was analysed using bioinformatics tools. From 14,489,131 clean reads, we obtained 1,852,722 small RNAs representing 45 known miRNA families that have been identified in other plant species. Further analysis using contigs assembled from Illumina mRNA sequencing of leaves from the same individual allowed the prediction of secondary structures of 25 known and 17 novel miRNAs. Potential targets were predicted for the most abundant mature miRNAs in the identified pre-miRNAs based on sequence homology. This study provide the first large scale identification of miRNAs and their potential targets of a species from Myrtaceae without previous genomic sequence resources. Our study provides more information about the evolutionary conservation of the regulatory network of miRNAs in plants and highlights the miRNAs species-specific.

2013-01-07 | GSE38211 | GEO