title: Genome-Wide Identification and Characterization of MicroRNAs and Target Genes in Lonicera japonica.
abstract: MiRNAs function in post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression and play very important roles in plant development. Lonicera japonica is one of the important medicinal plants in China. However, few studies on the discovery of conserved and novel miRNAs from L. japonica were reported. In this study, we employed deep sequencing technology to identify miRNAs in leaf and flower tissues of L. japonica. A total of 22.97 million clean reads from flower and leaf tissues were obtained, which generated 146 conserved miRNAs distributed in 20 families and 110 novel miRNAs. Accordingly, 72 differentially expressed miRNAs (P≤0.001) between leaves and flowers and their potential target genes were identified and validated. The qRT-PCR validation showed that majority of the differentially expressed miRNAs showed significant tissue-specific expression in L. japonica. Furthermore, the miRNA-mRNA and mRNA-mRNA regulatory networks were constructed using Cytoscape software. Taken together, this study identified a large number of miRNAs and target genes in L. japonica, which not only provides the first global miRNA expression profiles, but also sheds light on functional genomics research on L. japonica in the future.
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
authors.forename: Heng
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
authors.forename: Libin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
authors.forename: Gang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
authors.forename: Chunhua
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China.
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Long
authors.affiliation: Hubei Key Laboratory of Economic Forest Germplasm Improvement and Resources Comprehensive Utilization, Huanggang Normal University, Huanggang 438000, China.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xiang
authors.affiliation: Hubei Key Laboratory of Economic Forest Germplasm Improvement and Resources Comprehensive Utilization, Huanggang Normal University, Huanggang 438000, China.
authors.forename: Jianping
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gan
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
authors.forename: Yanhong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
authors.forename: Longjiang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.|Institute of Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China.
authors.forename: Maoteng
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D017124:Conserved Sequence; D035264:Flowers / Q000235:genetics; D017343:Genes, Plant / Q000235:genetics*; D023281:Genomics; D031239:Lonicera / Q000235:genetics*; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D018515:Plant Leaves / Q000235:genetics; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs; D012333:RNA, Messenger