Genome-wide analysis of RNAs associated with Populus euphratica Oliv. heterophyll morphogenesis [RNA-Seq]

The desert plant Populus euphratica Oliv. has typical heterophylly; linear (Li), lanceolate (La), ovate (Ov) and broad-ovate (Bo) leaves grow in turn from young to adult trees. It is therefore a potential model organism for leaf development. To investigate the roles of RNAs (including mRNAs, miRNAs, lncRNAs and circRNAs) in the morphogenesis of P. euphratica heterophyll, the juvenile heterophyll were respectively sampled, and then their expression patterns were analyzed by small RNA sequencing and strand-specific RNA sequencing. We found that 1374 mRNAs, 19 miRNAs, 71 lncRNAs and 2 circRNAs were P. euphratica heterophyll morphogenesis associated (PHMA) RNAs, among them, 17 PHMA miRNAs could disturb the expression of 46 PHMA mRNAs, furthermore, 11 lncRNAs and 2 circRNAs interacted with 27 PHMA mRNAs by ceRNA hypothesis, respectively. According to GO and KEGG pathway analysis, PHMA RNAs were mainly involved in metabolic, response to stimulus and developmental processes. Our results indicated that both external environmental factors and genetic factors of P. euphratica co-regulated the expression of PHMA RNAs, caused the cell division was repressed, while cell growth was reinforced, and resulted in the morphogenesis of P. euphratica heterophyll, ultimately. RNA-seq of linear (Li), lanceolate (La), ovate (Ov) and broad-ovate (Bo) leaf groups of Populus euphratica, every group including three biology replicates, were named Li1, Li2, Li3, La1, La2, La3, Ov1, Ov2, Ov3, Bo1, Bo2 and Bo3, respectively.And all the raw data of RNA-seq have been submitted to Sqeuence Read Archive(SRA) of NCBI under accession number SRP163216.