Abstract
Plant microRNAs have been implicated in various abiotic stress responses. We identified several conserved microRNAs that showed differential expression in Medicago truncatula plants subjected to water deficit: miR169 is down-regulated only in the roots and miR398a/b and miR408 are strongly up-regulated in both shoots and roots. Down-regulation of miR169 in the roots did not correlate with accumulation of its target MtHAP2-1 transcripts, suggesting that its regulation may not occur at the mRNA level or may depend on other regulatory mechanisms, which do not involve this miRNA, in water-deficit conditions. The up-regulation of miR398a/b and miR408 and the clear down-regulation of their respective target genes, which encode the copper proteins COX5b (subunit 5b of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase) and plantacyanin, highlight the involvement of these miRNAs in response to water deprivation in M. truncatula. Also, miR398 up-regulation is inversely correlated with the down-regulation of copper superoxide dismutase, CSD1, during water deficit. The regulation of genes encoding copper proteins by miR398a/b and miR408 suggests a link between copper homeostasis and M. truncatula adaptation to progressive water deficit.
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Abbreviations
- COX5b:
-
Subunit 5b of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase
- CSD:
-
Copper superoxide dismutase
- HDT3:
-
Histone deacetylase
- MiRNA:
-
MicroRNA
- P1B-ATPase:
-
P1B-Adenosine triphosphatase
- 5′-RACE:
-
5′-Rapid amplification of cDNA ends
- UTR:
-
Untranslated region
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) through the ERA-NET Plant Genomics initiative ERA-PG/0001/2006. Inês Trindade is recipient of a PhD fellowship from FCT (SFRH/BD/40738/2007). Dulce Santos was supported by a FCT post-doctoral fellowship (SFRH/BPD/33348/2008). We acknowledge Dr. Gyorgy Szittya and Dr. Runchun Jin (School of Biological Sciences, UEA) and Dr. Jorge Paiva and Dr. Susana Araújo (ITQB) for their technical advice.
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Trindade, I., Capitão, C., Dalmay, T. et al. miR398 and miR408 are up-regulated in response to water deficit in Medicago truncatula . Planta 231, 705–716 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-009-1078-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-009-1078-0