A dynamic network reveals the novel characteristics of miRNA regulation over time in response to the ABA hormone in Arabidopsis (mRNA)

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) participate in post-transcriptional regulation as short non-coding RNAs together with the transcription factors (TFs) and other regulatory factors such as alternative splicing (AS), which constitute complex gene regulatory networks. Following stimulation with ABA in Arabidopsis, we performed RNA-seq and small RNA-seq simultaneously at consecutive time points, and found that miRNAs respond rapidly under stress condition. Further functional analyses revealed that miRNAs classified according to different response time points play a role by binding different target genes. Systematic analysis including the static network of TF-target, TF-miRNA, miRNA-target and the time series DEGs and DE-miRNAs revealed a miRNA-mRNA dynamic regulatory network. We found that miRNAs in miRNA-containing feed-forward loops (M-FFLs) could enhance co-expression and crosstalks between different FFLs of network. Additionally, the differential transcript usage (DTU) and differential alternative splicing (DAS) analysis increased regulatory diversity between miRNA and its target genes. Collectively, our findings highlighted the systematical and precise post-transcriptional regulation of miRNAs in plant. Totally fifty-six samples, two treatments with seven time points and two replicates, and each sample has two files of paired-end data.