Abstract
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that play essential functions in abiotic stress responses. High temperature is a serious stress that affects crop yield and quality; however, the regulatory mechanisms of heat-responsive miRNAs remain poorly understood in maize (Zea mays L.). Here, 340 miRNAs (215 known and 125 novel) were identified from maize seedlings under heat stress and control conditions using high-throughput sequencing in elite inbred line CM1. The 215 known miRNAs were divided into 40 families, and 21-nt miRNAs were the most abundant. In total, 35 miRNAs (26 known and 9 novel) exhibited significantly different expression levels between the heat stress and control samples. Furthermore, 174 targets were predicted to be cleaved by 115 miRNAs using degradome sequencing. The biological roles and pathways of these targets were investigated using Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analyses. On the basis of relationships among miRNAs and target genes, as well as the enrichment results, a regulatory network was constructed, and 16 significantly differentially expressed miRNAs were involved in the network. Our study shows a comprehensive analysis of heat-responsive miRNAs and their targets in the maize inbred line CM1. The results are helpful for the functional research of the heat stress responsive miRNAs, and provide novel insights into the miRNA-mediated regulatory network and the underlying mechanisms in maize during heat stress response.
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Data availability
The generated raw reads were submitted to the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) of NCBI under Accession Number PRJNA643647.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Shanshan Xie for her help in this study.
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This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 31871627 and 31971895).
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YZ and QM conceived and designed the research. QYW, TCC, LJX, and JL performed the data analysis. QYW and XGZ conducted the gene expression experiments; YZ and GMH performed the construction of regulatory network. YZ drafted the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Zhao, Y., Wei, Q., Chen, T. et al. Identification and characterization of heat-responsive miRNAs and their regulatory network in maize. Plant Growth Regul 96, 195–208 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10725-021-00769-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10725-021-00769-7