Uncovering MicroRNA-Mediated resistance/susceptible responses to pathogen Curvularia lunata associated with maize combinated high-throughput sequencing, microarray hybridization and degradome analysis

Maize is the most important cereal crop grown widely throughout the world, and one of the most important staple food crops in the world. However, Curvularia leaf spot caused by Curvularia lunata (Wakker) Boed has lead to great yield losses in the past decades in maize production zone of world. Currently, many miRNAs in maize have been identified by high-throughput sequencing and computational analysis. Some miRNAs were induced under environmental stress, indicating that miRNA play an critic and different role in regulation of metabolic, morphological and physiological process. However, there is no report of miRNAs associated with the interaction of C. luanta with their hosts. Here, we identified a number of miRNAs that are involved in resistance/susceptible response by highly deep sequencing, and imaged the response process by microarray hybrid technique, confirmed the corresponding target gene with miRNA. It was noted that we provided the comprehensive understanding about miRNAs response to resistance/susceptible by combination analysis.