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Rubus idaeus has remarkable economic and cultural value. Developing efficient simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers is necessary for the molecular breeding of red raspberry. In this study, SSR mining was performed using the de novo transcriptome sequence of R. idaeus. In total, 14,210 SSR sequences were identified from 11,158 SSR-containing unigenes. In all the SSR sequences, mononucleotide, dinucleotide, and trinucleotide repeats were the most common, and their number and percentage were 1323 (9.31%), 6752 (47.52%), and 4897 (34.46%), respectively. Of the mononucleotide and dinucleotide repeats, A/T, AG/CT, AT/AT, and AC/GT were more abundant and accounted for 9.09%, 37.82%, 6.51%, and 3.14% of the total repeat number, respectively. In the trinucleotide, tetranucleotide, pentanucleotide, and hexanucleotide repeats, the nucleotide (NT) patterns AAG/CTT, AAAG/CTTT, AAAAG/CTTTT, and AAGAGG/CCTCTT were the most frequent, and accounted for 14.11%, 0.38%, 0.57%, and 0.23% of the total SSRs, respectively. Of the 480 SSR-containing unigenes with gene ontology (GO) annotation, the classification results showed that they were mainly involved in binding, catalytic, and transporter molecular functions. Most of the 3441 SSR-containing unigenes with the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) annotation were involved in the following top five pathways: metabolic, RNA transport, spliceosome, protein processing in the endoplasmic reticulum, and mRNA surveillance. Thirty pairs of primers derived from the red raspberry transcriptome were randomly selected to assess their polymorphism by using 15 red raspberry germplasms, in which the polymorphism information content (PIC) values ranged from 0.50 to 0.86, with a mean of 0.73, thereby indicating a high level of polymorphism. The unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean clustering results indicated that the thirty pairs of primers could precisely distinguish the germplasms. This study reveals the SSR distribution characteristics of red raspberry and provides a scientific basis for further genetic diversity studies and genetic linkage map construction for this species.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short noncoding RNAs (20–25 nucleotides) that regulate gene expression posttranscriptionally. However, identification and characterization of miRNAs remain limited for conifer species. In this study, we applied transcriptome-wide miRNAs sequencing to a conifer species Platycladus orientalis, which is highly adaptable to a wide range of environmental adversities, including drought, barren soil, and mild salinity. A total of 17,181,542 raw reads were obtained from the Illumina sequencing platform; 31 conserved and 91 novel miRNAs were identified, and their unique characteristics were further analyzed. Ten randomly selected miRNAs were validated by quantificational real-time polymerase chain reaction. Through miRNA target predictions based on psRNATarget, 2331 unique mRNAs were predicted to be targets of P. orientalis miRNAs that involved in 187 metabolic pathways in KEGG database. These targets included not only important transcription factors (e.g., class III homeodomain leucine zipper targeted by por-miR166d) but also indispensable nontranscriptional factor proteins (i.e., por-miR482a-3p regulated nucleotide-binding site leucine-rich repeat protein). Interestingly, six miRNAs (por-miR16, -miR44, -miR60-5p, -miR69–3p, -miR166b-5p, and -miR395c) were found in adaptation-related pathways (e.g., drought), indicating their possible involved in this species’ stress-tolerance characteristics. The present study provided essential information for understanding the regulatory role of miRNAs in P. orientalis and sheds light on their possible use in tree improvement for stress tolerance.
Wintersweet is a woody ornamental plant and has a long history of human cultivation. Few molecular markers have been characterized and remain scant in wintersweet. This study aimed to mine simple sequence repeats (SSRs) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from the transcriptomic database of wintersweet. A total of 3972 SSRs and 97,060 putative SNPs/indels (92,307 SNPs and 4753 indels) were identified in this data set. This study marks the highest number of SSR and SNP markers discovered to date from wintersweet by using transcriptome sequencing data. These identified markers will provide a useful source for molecular genetic studies such as genetic diversity and characterization, association mapping, and map-based gene cloning in wintersweet.