miRNA Accumulation Correlates with Increased Phloem Cell Proliferation in Tomato hawaiian skirt Mutants

The cambium is the meristem responsible for production of plant vascular tissues, the xylem and phloem, during plant radial growth. The tomato hws mutant exhibits miRNA accumulation and produces a markedly enlarged phloem, suggesting a role for miRNAs in regulating vascular development. This study aims to identify the accumulated miRNAs associated with the vascular phenotype in hws mutants Key miRNAs, including miR319 and miR164, were identified as highly accumulated in the mutant pedicels, with predicted targets linked to meristematic activity. The distal parts of pedicels, from above the abscission zone to below the calyx, of 10-DAA WT and hws-1 fruits were collected. Five pedicel segments were bulked into one sample. Total RNA was extracted and three biological replicates for each line were sequenced using a Illumina NovaSeq X Plus platform at a depth of one million-read per sample. Raw sequence data was analyzed with the sRNAminer pipeline with default settings.