After dephosphorylation and ligation to an adapter, the products were reverse transcribed ref 3 and amplified by Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries PCR, and were later sequenced using Illu mina technology. Bioinformatics analysis and target validation Primers and 3 5 adaptors were removed from the ori ginal reads and other contaminants were removed Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries using RepeatMas ker. Small RNA sequences of 18 to 26 nt were collected and subjected to BLAST analysis against the Oryza sativa ssp. indica 9311 sequence using SOAP aligner. Whole matching sequences were compared with annotated rice miRNAs and their precursors in miRBase, homologs of the indica 93 11 genome were regarded as mature miRNAs and miRNA precursors based on Patscan searches. MiRNAs located at the pos ition 2 nt of the precursors were also included as ma ture miRNAs.

New miRNA prediction was based on the rules described by Sunkar et al. We ran Mfold soft ware using Perl script to identify novel miRNAs, we used a 20 bp frame to search sequences 20 to 260 bp up stream and downstream of each miRNA. Candidate miRNA identification standards were those suggested by Meyers et al. miRNA miRNA region with 3 bulges, total Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries mismatches 6 bases. Candidate tar gets were identified by miRU following methods previ ously described. Gene expression analysis using microarray hybridization Grain samples were collected at three stages, milk ripe, soft dough and hard dough with three biological replicates for each stage. Total RNA was used as the starting material for each assay. RNAs were size fractionated using a YM 100 Microcon centrifugal filter, and the small RNAs were isolated and extended with a poly tail using poly polymerase.

miRNA microarray chips were fabricated Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries by LC Sciences, Houston, Texas, USA. A total of 546 probes were spotted on each chip, including 254 known miRNAs from miRBase version 13. 0, 11 newly identified candidates and 50 controls with six duplications. Rice 5 S rRNA served as an inner positive control, and PUC2 20B, an artificial non homologous nucleic acid, was used as an external positive control. Perfect match and single base mismatch counterparts to the external positive control, named PUC2PM 20B and PUC2MM 20B, were spiked into the RNA samples before probe la beling. Blank and non homologous nucleic acids were used as negative controls. Chip hybridization experi ments were carried out in triplicate using different biological samples.

Hybridization images were collected using Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries a laser scanner and digitized using Array Pro image analysis software. Signal values were derived by background subtrac tion and normalization. selleck catalog A transcript to be listed as detect able had to fulfill at least two conditions, signal intensity higher than 3�� and spot coefficient of variation 0. 5. CV was calculated by. When repeating probes were present on an array, a transcript was listed as detectable only if the signals from at least 50% of the repeating probes were above detection level.