MicroRNAs are small non-coding RNAs of 21-24 nucleotides in length that acts as important modulators of gene expression related to numerous biological processes including development and defense response in eukaryotes. However, only a limited report on onion (Allium cepa) miRNAs is available and their associated role in growth and development of onion is not yet clear. Therefore, it is of interest to identify miRNAs and their targets in Allium cepa using the genome survey sequences (GSSs) and expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and deduce the functions of the target genes using gene ontology (GO) terms. We report 14 potential miRNAs belonging to 13 different families (miR162, miR168, miR172c, miR172e, miR398, miR400, miR414, miR1134, miR1223, miR6219, miR7725, miR8570, miR8703 and miR8752). BLAST analysis using psRNATarget server predicted 39 potential targets for the identified miRNAs majority of which were transcription factors implicated in plant growth, development, hormone signaling and stress responses. These data forms the basis for further analysis and verification towards understanding the miRNA mediated regulatory mechanism in Allium cepa.
Chitinases are glycoside hydrolase (GH) family of proteins having multifaceted roles in plants. It is of interest to identify and characterize chitinase-encoding genes from the popular bulbous plant onion (Allium cepa L.). We have used the EST sequences for onion chitinases to elucidate its functional features using sequence, structure and functional analysis. These contigs belong to the GH19 chitinases family according to domain architecture analysis. They have highly conserved chitinase motifs including motifs exclusive to plant chitinases as implied using the MEME based structural characterization. Estimation of biochemical properties suggested that these proteins have features to form stable and hydrophilic proteins capable of localizing extracellular and in vacuoles. Further, they have multiple cellular processes including defense role as inferred by DeepGO function prediction. Phylogenetic analysis grouped them as class I and class VII plant chitinase, with possible abundance of class I chitinase in onion. These observations help in the isolation and functional validation of onion chitinases.
MicroRNAs are a class of approximately 20-24 nucleotides (nt) endogenous small RNAs that negatively regulate gene expression and play vital roles in multiple biological processes, including plant growth, development and responses to environmental stresses. Onion (Allium cepa L.), also called as "queen of kitchen" is a bulbous vegetable crop cultivated in almost all parts of the world. However, the miRNA repertoire of onion is highly ambiguous. In the present study, we report the computational identification of miRNAs and their targets from expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and genome survey sequences (GSSs) of Allium cepa L as well as functionally annotated the target genes. By following a stringent pipeline, we used 20225 ESTs and 10725 GSS from onion to identify 9 new potential miRNA belonging to 8 different miRNA families (miR172, miR1134, miR1223, miR6219, miR7725, miR8570, miR8703 and miR8752). Under a stringent condition, 26 potential targets were identified for the 8 miRNAs with distinct functions related to growth and development, signal transduction, metabolism, defense and stress responses. Overall, the present finding will make the pathway for understanding of molecular mechanisms of miRNA in onion and understanding their involvement in post-transcriptional gene silencing mechanism towards regulation of stress responses in this economically important plant.
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