AUTHOR=Santos Camilla Alves , Moro Camila Fernandes , Salgado Ione , Braga Márcia Regina , Gaspar Marília 

TITLE=Noncoding RNAs responsive to nitric oxide and their protein-coding gene targets shed light on root hair formation in Arabidopsis thaliana

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genetics

VOLUME=Volume 13 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2022.958641

DOI=10.3389/fgene.2022.958641

ISSN=1664-8021

ABSTRACT=An overview of the total A. thaliana transcriptome, described previously by our research group, pointed some non-coding RNA (ncRNA) as participants in the restoration of hair-root phenotype in A. thaliana rhd6 mutants, leading us to a deeper investigation. A transcriptional gene expression profiling of seedling roots was performed aiming to identify ncRNA responsive to nitric oxide (GSNO) and auxin (IAA) and their involvement in root hair formation in the rhd6 null mutant. We identified 3,631 ncRNAs, including new ones, in A. thaliana and differential expression (DE) analysis between (i) GSNO-treated rhd6 vs. untreated rhd6, (ii) IAA-treated rhd6 vs. untreated rhd6, (iii) GSNO-treated rhd6 vs. IAA-treated rhd6 and (iv) WS-2 vs. untreated rhd6 detected the greatest number of DE genes in GSNO-treated rhd6. We detected hundreds of in silico interactions among ncRNA and Protein Coding Genes (PCG), highlighting MIR5658 and MIR171 precursors highly up-regulated in GSNO-treated rhd6 and wild-type. Those ncRNA interact with many DE PCG involved in hormone signalling, cell wall development, transcription factors and root hair formation, becoming candidate genes in cell wall modulation and restoration of root hair phenotype by GSNO treatment. Our data shed light on how GSNO modulate ncRNA and their PCG targets in A. thaliana root hair formation.