Large scale sequencing of viroid derived small RNA in Potato spindle tuber viroid infected tomato plants. Solanum lycopersicum

In order to analyze the production of small RNA (sRNA) by viroids upon infecting the plants, the tomato plants (Lycopersicum esculentum cv. Rutgers) were inoculated with the variants of Potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd). After 21-days of post inoculation, total RNA was extracted and subjected for deep-sequencing using Illumina platform. The primers were trimmed and only 21- to 24-nt long small RNAs were filtered after quality check of the raw data. The filtered 21- to 24-nt was mapped against the genomic and antigenomic strands of the respective PSTVd variants using standard pattern matching algorithm. The profiling of viroid derived sRNA (vd-sRNA) revealed that the viroids are susceptible to host RNA silencing mechanism. Overall design: Evaluation of the vd-sRNA production in PSTVd infected tomato plants by high-throughput sequencing of small RNAs.