Differential regulation of microRNAs in response to osmotic, salt and cold stresses in wheat

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are tiny non-coding regulatory molecules that modulate plant's gene expression either by cleaving or repressing their mRNA targets. To unravel the plant actions in response to various environmental factors, identification of stress related miRNAs is essential. For understanding the regulatory behaviour of various abiotic stresses and miRNAs in wheat genotype C-306, we examined expression profile of selected conserved miRNAs viz. miR159, miR164, miR168, miR172, miR393, miR397, miR529 and miR1029 tangled in adapting osmotic, salt and cold stresses. The investigation revealed that two miRNAs (miR168, miR397) were down-regulated and miR172 was up-regulated under all the stress conditions. However, miR164 and miR1029 were up-regulated under cold and osmotic stresses in contrast to salt stress. miR529 responded to cold alone and does not change under osmotic and salt stress. miR393 showed up-regulation under osmotic and salt, and down-regulation under cold stress indicating auxin based differential cold response. Variation in expression level of studied miRNAs in presence of target genes delivers a likely elucidation of miRNAs based abiotic stress regulation. In addition, we reported new stress induced miRNAs Ta-miR855 using computational approach. Results revealed first documentation that miR855 is regulated by salinity stress in wheat. These findings indicate that diverse miRNAs were responsive to osmotic, salt and cold stress and could function in wheat response to abiotic stresses.

Constitutive Expression of Rice MicroRNA528 Alters Plant Development and Enhances Tolerance to Salinity Stress and Nitrogen Starvation in Creeping Bentgrass

“…It would be interesting to know if different miRNAs have interactions in plant responses to abiotic stress. To this end, stem-loop RT-qPCR was conducted to analyze several conserved miRNAs that are implicated in plant abiotic stress responses, including miR396, miR156, and miR172 (Wu et al, 2009a;Gao et al, 2010;Hackenberg et al, 2012;Liang et al, 2012;Bhardwaj et al, 2014;Cui et al, 2014;Gupta et al, 2014;Pandey et al, 2014;Xie et al, 2015). Figure 11, A to C, shows that miR396, miR156, and miR172 were all down-regulated in transgenic plants overexpressing Osa-miR528, suggesting a potential cross talk of miR528 with other miRNAs in the regulatory network to orchestrate the plant response to stress.…”

miRNA-based drought regulation in wheat

“…After discovery of miRNAs as a post-transcriptional regulator, it has led to the understanding of the expression behavior of Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10142-015-0452-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. genes at post-transcriptional level (Gupta et al 2014). In recent years, several studies showed that miRNAs are involved in response to abiotic stress (Sunkar et al 2007;Lu and Huang 2008;Zhou et al 2010;Eldem et al 2012;Wang et al 2013;Eren et al 2015;Hajyzadeh et al 2015).…”

“…In recent years, several studies showed that miRNAs are involved in response to abiotic stress (Sunkar et al 2007;Lu and Huang 2008;Zhou et al 2010;Eldem et al 2012;Wang et al 2013;Eren et al 2015;Hajyzadeh et al 2015). Several miRNA families have been reported to be differentially regulated in response to drought stress in various plant species, including rice (Zhao et al 2007), tomato (Solanum lycopersicum , Arabidopsis (Liu et al 2008), Medicago truncatula (Trindade et al 2010), peach (Eldem, et al 2012), barley (Kantar et al 2010), and wheat (Gupta, et al 2014;Pandey, et al 2014). There are several studies documenting expression levels of various miRNAs in T. aestivum L. (Xin, et al 2010;Inal et al 2014;Pandey, et al 2014), but none of these miRNAs are experimentally verified.…”

Root precursors of microRNAs in wild emmer and modern wheats show major differences in response to drought stress

“…Drought-related changes in the expressions of two (miR164, miR397) were even reported in bread wheat (Gupta et al 2014). These miRNAs were identified only from TR39477 samples, which may indicate higher accumulation of these miRNA species in this genotype; however, their presence in the other two genotypes cannot be excluded.…”