Profiling of small RNA populations in uninucleate microspores and bicellular pollen of rice

There are multiple types of small RNAs that may affect rice pollen’s development. To investigate the small RNA populations’ change during rice pollen development, 13-40 nt RNA were extracted from uninucleate microspores (UNM) and bicellular pollen (BCP) for high throughput sequencing. Together with our laboratory’s previous published rice tricellular pollen (TCP) small RNA sequencing data (GSM722128), sharp increase of tRNA fragments (tRFs) in BCP stage and a slightly decreased tRFs in TCP were found. Among which, new lengths of tRFs were also discovered. Our work accomplished the knowledge about tRFs in rice pollen development. Spores from 3 stages of pollen development (UNM: uninucleate microspore, BCP: bicellular pollen; TCP: tricellular pollen) were isolated using a sucrose gradient-based method and the small RNA fraction for either sample was isolated and sequenced by Illumina technology.