Bioinformatics analysis of microRNAs related to cold Stress and their effects on proteins associated with fatty acids metabolism in rapeseed (Brassica napus L.)

Rapeseed (Brassica napus) is one of the most important oil plants in the world. Not only it has rich sources of fatty acids, but also contains protein. Cold stress is one of the growth limiting factors for this plant, which causes massive molecular changes inside the plant. In this research miRNAs, bna-miR164a, bra-miR5712, bra-miR5717, bna-miR6029, bna-miR6035, bna-N_miR2, bna-N_miR16 that previously had been studied separately in cold and fatty acid biosynthesis, were selected for investigation of the relationship between microRNAs, Cold stress, Fatty Acids and Lipids. Afterwards, bioinformatics prediction of target genes, investigation of gene ontology and their functional pathway and mapping of protein interactions network were performed. As a result, it was discovered that miRNAs which are effective in cold stress, beside regulation of target genes such as SCRM2, HOS1, STZ, GLP4, PP2CA, which are responsible for cold response and thermal stimulus-response, also have regulatory roles on other target genes such as KAS2, FAD8, FAD4, AAD3, FAD7, FAD2 which are involved in biological processes such as unsaturated fatty acid biosynthesis, unsaturated fatty acid metabolism, fatty acid biosynthesis, fatty acid metabolism, cellular lipid catabolism and lipid metabolism, lipid biosynthesis, cellular lipid metabolism. Evaluation of Protein-Protein Interactions revealed that there was a relation between the target genes involved in fatty acid biosynthesis and the target genes involved in cold stress. The next step for subsequent research is to investigate the expression of these miRNAs and their target genes during cold stress and further experimental verifications to prove the regulatory relationship between them.