Genome-wide identification of long non-coding RNAs in pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum (L.)) genotype subjected to drought stress
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Date
2022
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Agronomy
Abstract
Pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum L.) is affected by drought stress, affecting crop productivity
and survival. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are reported to play a vital role in the response
to drought stress. LncRNAs represent a major part of non-protein coding RNAs and are present
prevalently. These are involved in various biological processes, which may functionally act as RNA
rather than getting transcribed as protein. We targeted genome-wide identification of lncRNAs in
pearl millet from root and leaf tissues subjected to drought stress. A total of 879 lncRNAs were
identified, out of which 209 (leaf control, root control), 198 (leaf treated, root treated), 115 (leaf
control, leaf treated) and 194 (root control, root treated) were differentially expressed. Two lncRNAs
were found as potential target mimics of three miRNAs from the miRBase database. Gene ontology
study revealed that drought-responsive lncRNAs are involved in biological processes like ‘metabolic
process’ and ‘cellular process’, molecular functions like ‘binding’ and ‘catalytic activities’ and cellular
components like ‘cell’, ‘cell part’ and ‘membrane part’. LncRNA-miRNA-mRNA network shows
that it plays a vital role in the stress-responsive mechanism through their activities in hormone
signal transduction, response to stress, response to auxin and transcription factor activity. Only
four lncRNAs were found to get a match with the lncRNAs present in the plant lncRNA database
CANTATAdb, which shows its poorly conserved nature among species. This information has been
cataloged in the pearl millet drought-responsive long non-coding RNA database (PMDlncRDB).
The discovered lncRNAs can be used in the improvement of important traits, as well as CISPR-Cas
technology, in the editing of ncRNAs in plants for trait improvement. Such a study will increase our
understanding of the expression behavior of lncRNAs, as well as its underlying mechanisms under
drought stress in pearl millet.
Description
Keywords
lncRNAs; pearl millet; drought; miRNAs; web resource