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