Authors: Ira Vashisht Prashant Mishra Tarun Pal Sreekrishna Chanumolu Tiratha Raj Singh Rajinder Singh Chauhan
Publish Date: 2015/02/07
Volume: 241, Issue: 5, Pages: 1255-1268
Abstract
miRNAs are ubiquitous noncoding RNA species that target complementary sequences of mRNA and result in either translational repression or target degradation in eukaryotes The role of miRNAs has not been investigated in P kurroa which is a medicinal herb of industrial value due to the presence of secondary metabolites picrosideI and picrosideII Computational identification of miRNAs was done in 6 transcriptomes of P kurroa generated from root shoot and stolon organs varying for growth development and culture conditions All available plant miRNA entries were retrieved from miRBase and used as backend datasets to computationally identify conserved miRNAs in transcriptome data sets Total 18 conserved miRNAs were detected in P kurroa followed by target prediction and functional annotation which suggested their possible role in controlling various biological processes Validation of miRNA and expression analysis by qRTPCR and 5′ RACE revealed that miRNA4995 has a regulatory role in terpenoid biosynthesis ultimately affecting the production of picrosideI miR5532 and miR5368 had negligible expression in fieldgrown samples as compared to in vitrocultured samples suggesting their role in regulating P kurroa growth in culture conditions The study has thus identified novel functions for existing miRNAs which can be further validated for their potential regulatory role
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