Abstract

ORDONEZ-BAQUERA, Perla Lucía et al. Isolation of microRNAs from Bouteloua gracilis chlorophyllous cells and their in silico characterization. Rev. mex. de cienc. pecuarias [online]. 2016, vol.7, n.3, pp.263-274. ISSN 2448-6698.

Bouteloua gracilis is a grass native to Mexico, it is used as forage source for livestock because of its high nutritional value. It has high tolerance to osmotic stress and therefore can live in arid zones; however, regulation mechanisms in gene expression that confer these characteristics have not been reported. There is a class of small RNAs (sRNAs) called microRNAs (miRNAs), which regulate gene expression. They are complementary and act by binding to messenger RNAs (mRNAs to inhibit translation or by degrading them. In this work, the isolation of sRNAs from B. gracilis through cloning and sequencing of concatemers is reported. In silico analysis of the sequences obtained allowed to identify conserved sequences in Populus trichocarpa, Brachypodium distachyon, Oryza sativa, Sorghum bicolor, Zea mays, Malus domestica, and Linum usitatissimum. Furthermore, the secondary structure of the miRNA precursor (pre-miRNA) was predicted from two sequences isolated from In silico analysis using Glycine max, Zea mays, Sorghum bicolor, and Oryza sativa as reference genomes. Finally, six target mRNAs were identified for one of the miRNAs obtained. Identification of miRNAs in Bouteloua gracilis will help to understand how these molecules regulate gene expression and in the future will allow for the study at molecular level, providing insight on how this grass responds to environmental stress.

Keywords : Blue gramma; miRNAs; Genetic regulation; Bioinformatics analysis.

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