Differential expression of microRNAs in dormant bud of tea [Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze]

Abstract

Expression analysis of miRNAs and understanding their target genes function in dormant tea bud might be used to identify molecular network panel and novel approaches for modulating dormancy in tea. Tea [Camellia sinensis (L) O. Kuntze, Theaceae] is an important commercial beverage crop manufactured from the apical bud and two leaves immediately below the bud. The yield and quality of tea depend on the vegetative growth of shoots and bud dormancy. The dormancy of bud is being regulated by many factors, such as mechanical, environmental and molecular mechanisms. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a newly identified class of small non-protein coding regulatory RNAs in both plants and animals which regulates gene expression at post-transcriptional level either by cleavage or translational inhibition of targeted mRNA transcripts. With these importances, the expression pattern of tea miRNAs was analyzed in active and dormant bud using stem-loop pulse RT-qPCR method. The results demonstrated the following expression pattern for highly up-regulated miRNAs, cs-miR 414[csmiR 408[cs-miR782[cs-miR169, and down-regulated miRNAs, cs-miR828[cs-miR1864[cs-miR852[csmiR1425 in dormant bud of tea. Furthermore, the role of target transcripts regulated by these miRNAs in relation to bud dormancy was discussed in detail. Therefore, the present study on the miRNA expression in tea will provide basis and considerably broaden the scope of understanding the function of miRNAs within the bud tissues and can serve as an initial point for RNA interference-based controlling strategies of bud dormancy in tea.

Identification of novel miRNAs and miRNA expression profiling in embryogenic tissues of Picea balfouriana treated by 6-benzylaminopurine

“…At the same time, because there was bias (5′ U) in the first-position base of miRNA, we estimated prediction accuracy by calculating this first position base bias among sRNA candidates 18–24 nt in length. Additionally, the target genes of potential novel and conserved miRNAs were predicted as described previously [36–38] and their potential roles in early SE were investigated by functional annotation using the Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) Pathway databases.…”

Brassinosteroids Improve Quality of Summer Tea (Camellia sinensis L.) by Balancing Biosynthesis of Polyphenols and Amino Acids

“…A recent study showed that amiRNA designated as cs-miR414 is profoundly expressed in dormant bud of tea compared with that in active bud, and cs-miR414 targets mRNAs that are involved in maintaining the endogenous concentration of BRs and its homeostasis, implying that BRs level is critical for bud dormancy in tea (Jeyaraj et al, 2014). Based on these recent reports and the role of BRs in secondary metabolism in various plant species, we hypothesized that BRs might influence the concentration of TP and AA in tea leaves, and thus the quality of green tea.…”

Small RNA and degradome profiling reveals important roles for microRNAs and their targets in tea plant response to drought stress

“…Drought was reported not only to lead to a 14-33% reduction in tea production but also to cause 6-19% plant mortality (Cheruiyot et al 2009). A limited number of tea miRNAs have been identified using high-throughput deep sequencing and bioinformatics approaches (Das and Mondal 2010, Jeyaraj et al 2014, Zhu and Luo 2013, Zhang et al 2014b, Zheng et al 2015, but drought-responsive miRNAs have not been globally identified in tea plants. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify drought-responsive miRNAs and their putative targets, study the miRNA-mediated regulation of the tea plant response to DS, and predict miRNA/target modules that might be involved in tea plant drought tolerance.…”