Inferring the Regulatory Network of the miRNA-mediated Response to Biotic and Abiotic Stress in Melon

[EN] Background: MiRNAs have emerged as key regulators of stress response in plants, suggesting their potential as candidates for knock-in/out to improve stress tolerance in agricultural crops. Although diverse assays have been performed, systematic and detailed studies of miRNA expression and function during exposure to multiple environments in crops are limited. Results: Here, we present such pioneering analysis in melon plants in response to seven biotic and abiotic stress conditions. Deep-sequencing and computational approaches have identified twenty-four known miRNAs whose expression was significantly altered under at least one stress condition, observing that down-regulation was preponderant. Additionally, miRNA function was characterized by high scale degradome assays and quantitative RNA measurements over the intended target mRNAs, providing mechanistic insight. Clustering analysis provided evidence that eight miRNAs showed a broad response range under the stress conditions analyzed, whereas another eight miRNAs displayed a narrow response range. Transcription factors were predominantly targeted by stressresponsive miRNAs in melon. Furthermore, our results show that the miRNAs that are down-regulated upon stress predominantly have as targets genes that are known to participate in the stress response by the plant, whereas the miRNAs that are up-regulated control genes linked to development. Conclusion: Altogether, this high-resolution analysis of miRNA-target interactions, combining experimental and computational work, Illustrates the close interplay between miRNAs and the response to diverse environmental conditions, in melon.The authors thank Dr. A. Monforte for providing melon seeds and Dra. B. Pico (Cucurbits Group - COMAV) for providing melon seeds and Monosporascus isolate respectively. This work was supported by grants AGL2016-79825-R, BIO2014-61826-EXP (GG), and BFU2015-66894-P (GR) from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (co-supported by FEDER). The funders had no role in the experiment design, data analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Sanz-Carbonell, A.; Marques Romero, MC.; Bustamante-González, AJ.; Fares Riaño, MA.; Rodrigo Tarrega, G.; Gomez, GG. (2019). Inferring the Regulatory Network of the miRNA-mediated Response to Biotic and Abiotic Stress in Melon. BMC Plant Biology. 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-019-1679-0117Zhang B. MicroRNAs: a new target for improving plant tolerance to abiotic stress. J Exp Bot. 2015;66:1749–61.Zhu JK. Abiotic stress signaling and responses in plants. Cell. 2016;167:313–24.Bielach A, Hrtyan M, Tognetti VB. Plants under stress: involvement of auxin and Cytokinin. Int J Mol Sci. 2017;4(18):7.Zarattini M, Forlani G. 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