Identification of Novel and Conserved microRNAs in Rehmannia glutinosa L. by Solexa Sequencing

We report the use of a high throughput (Solexa) sequencing platform to obtain the sequences of a large number of microRNAs (miRNAs) from the Chinese medicinal plant Rehmannia glutinosa L. The analysis of >14,000,000 sequence reads allowed the identification of seven novel miRNAs (comprising seven miRNA families) and conserved 89 miRNAs (comprising 25 miRNA families) in R. glutinosa. The relative abundance of some these miRNAs was checked using quantitive PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis. Some putative target genes of the novel miRNAs were predicted.