0000000000297600
AUTHOR
Gustavo Gómez
Exploring the miRNA-mediated response to combined stresses in melon plants
AbstractClimate change has been associated with a higher incidence of combined adverse environmental conditions that can promote a significant decrease in crop productivity. However, knowledge on how a combination of stresses might affect plant development is still scarce. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been proposed as potential targets for improving crop-productivity. Here, we have combined deep-sequencing, computational characterization of responsive miRNAs and validation of their regulatory role in a comprehensive analysis of melon’s response to several combinations of four stresses (cold, salinity, short day, and infection with a fungus). Twenty-two miRNA families responding to double and/or …
Identification and Characterization of Stress-Responsive TAS3-Derived TasiRNAs in Melon
Small interfering RNAs (siRNA) are key regulators of gene expression that play essential roles in diverse biological processes. Trans-acting siRNAs (tasiRNAs) are a class of plant-endogenous siRNAs that lead the cleavage of non-identical transcripts. TasiRNAs are usually involved in fine-tuning development. However, increasing evidence supports that tasiRNAs may be involved in stress response. Melon is a crop of great economic importance extensively cultivated in semiarid regions frequently exposed to changing environmental conditions that limit its productivity. However, knowledge of the precise role of siRNAs in general, and of tasiRNAs in particular, in regulating the response to adverse…
Dynamic architecture and regulatory implications of the miRNA network underlying the response to stress in melon
miRNAs are small RNAs that regulate mRNAs at both transcriptional and posttranscriptional level. In plants, miRNAs are involved in the regulation of different processes including development and stress-response. Elucidating how stress-responsive miRNAs are regulated is key to understand the global response to stress but also to develop efficient biotechnological tools that could help to cope with stress. Here, we describe a computational approach based on sRNA sequencing, transcript quantification and degradome data to analyse the accumulation, function and structural organization of melon miRNAs reactivated under seven biotic and abiotic stress conditions at two and four days post-treatmen…
Highly efficient construction of infectious viroid-derived clones
[Background] Viroid research generally relies on infectious cDNA clones that consist of dimers of the entire viroid sequence. At present, those dimers are generated by self-ligation of monomeric cDNA, a strategy that presents several disadvantages: (i) low efficiency, (ii) it is a non-oriented reaction requiring tedious screenings and (iii) additional steps are required for cloning into a binary vector for agroinfiltration or for in vitro RNA production.
Combined Stress Conditions in Melon Induce Non-additive Effects in the Core miRNA Regulatory Network
Climate change has been associated with a higher incidence of combined adverse environmental conditions that can promote a significant decrease in crop productivity. However, knowledge on how a combination of stresses might affect plant development is still scarce. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been proposed as potential targets for improving crop productivity. Here, we have combined deep-sequencing, computational characterization of responsive miRNAs and validation of their regulatory role in a comprehensive analysis of response of melon to several combinations of four stresses (cold, salinity, short day, and infection with a fungus). Twenty-two miRNA families responding to double and/or triple …
Symptom severity, infection progression and plant responses in solanum plants caused by three pospiviroids vary with the inoculation procedure
This article belongs to the Section Molecular Plant Sciences.
Might exogenous circular RNAs act as protein-coding transcripts in plants?
Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are regulatory molecules involved in the modulation of gene expression. Although originally assumed as non-coding RNAs, recent studies have evidenced that animal circRNAs can act as translatable transcripts. The study of plant-circRNAs is incipient, and no autonomous coding plant-circRNA has been described yet. Viroids are the smallest plant-pathogenic circRNAs known to date. Since their discovery 50 years ago, viroids have been considered valuable systems for the study of the structure-function relationships in RNA, essentially because they have not been shown to have coding capacity. We used two pathogenic circRNAs (Hop stunt viroid and Eggplant latent viroid) as …
Viral fitness determines the magnitude of transcriptomic and epigenomic reprograming of defense responses in plants
Although epigenetic factors may influence the expression of defense genes in plants, their role in antiviral responses and the impact of viral adaptation and evolution in shaping these interactions are still poorly explored. We used two isolates of turnip mosaic potyvirus with varying degrees of adaptation to Arabidopsis thaliana to address these issues. One of the isolates was experimentally evolved in the plant and presented increased load and virulence relative to the ancestral isolate. The magnitude of the transcriptomic responses was larger for the evolved isolate and indicated a role of innate immunity systems triggered by molecular patterns and effectors in the infection process. Sev…
Viral fitness determines the magnitude of transcriptomic and epigenomic reprogramming of defense responses in plants
SUMMARYAlthough epigenetic factors may influence the expression of defense genes in plants, their role in antiviral responses and the impact of viral adaptation and evolution in shaping these interactions are still poorly explored. We used two isolates of turnip mosaic potyvirus (TuMV) with varying degrees of adaptation to Arabidopsis thaliana to address these issues. One of the isolates was experimentally evolved in the plant and presented increased load and virulence relative to the ancestral isolate. The magnitude of the transcriptomic responses were larger for the evolved isolate and indicated a role of innate immunity systems triggered by molecular patterns and effectors in the infecti…
Hop stunt viroid: A polyphagous pathogenic RNA that has shed light on viroid–host interactions
[Taxonomy]: Hop stunt viroid (HSVd) is the type species of the genus Hostuviroid (family Pospiviroidae). The other species of this genus is Dahlia latent viroid, which presents an identical central conserved region (CCR) but lacks other structural hallmarks present in Hop stunt viroid. HSVd replication occurs in the nucleus through an asymmetric rolling-circle model as in the other members of the family Pospiviroidae, which also includes the genera Pospiviroid, Cocadviroid, Apscaviroid, and Coleoviroid.