The miRNAs and their targets in cucumber shoot apexes in response to temperature and photoperiod environments

The cucumber is one of the most important vegetables worldwide and is used as a research model for study of phloem transport, sex determination and temperature-photoperiod physiology. The shoot apex is the most important plant tissue in which the cell fate and organ meristems have been determined. In this study, a series of whole-genome small RNA, degradome and transcriptome analyses were performed on cucumber shoot apical tissues treated with high vs. low temperature and a long vs. short photoperiod. Overall design: small RNAs and mRNAs were pyrosequenced from the shoot apical tissues of cucumber plants grown in four differential temperature-photoperiod treatments (16 h light at 28 °C /8 h dark at 25 °C, HL; 8 h light at 28 °C /16 h dark at 25 °C, HS; 16 h light at 20 °C /8 h dark at 15 °C, LL; 8 h light at 20 °C /16 h dark at 15 °C, LS). The 16 h/8 h and 8-h/16 h of light/dark photoperiods simulated long- and short-day seasons.Three replicates were perfermed on each treatment.