Mining sRNAs With Potential Transboundary Regulation of Rice Genes Associated With Growth and Defense Through Expression Profile Analysis of the Pathogen-Infected Rice.

In recent years, studies have shown that phytopathogenic fungi possess the ability of cross-kingdom regulation of host plants through small RNAs (sRNAs). , a causative agent of rice blast, introduces disease by penetrating the rice tissues through appressoria. However, little is known about the transboundary regulation of sRNAs during the interaction of the pathogen with its host rice. Therefore, investigation of the regulation of through sRNAs in the infected rice plants has important theoretical and practical significance for disease control and production improvement. Based on the high-throughput data of sRNAs and the mixed sRNAs during infection, the differential expressions of sRNAs in before and during infection were compared, it was found that expression levels of 366 sRNAs were upregulated significantly during infection. We trained a SVM model which can be used to predict differentially expressed sRNAs, which has reference significance for the prediction of differentially expressed sRNAs of homologous species, and can facilitate the research of in the future. Furthermore, fifty core targets were selected from the predicted target genes on rice for functional enrichment analysis, the analysis reveals that there are nine biological processes and one KEGG pathway associated with rice growth and disease defense. These functions correspond to thirteen rice genes. A total of fourteen sRNAs targeting the rice genes were identified by data analysis, and their authenticity was verified in the database of sRNAs. The 14 sRNAs may participate in the transboundary regulation process and act as sRNA effectors to manipulate the rice blast process.