Identification of miR172 family members and their putative targets responding to drought stress in Solanum tuberosum

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) function as negative posttranscriptional regulators during plant development and in response to biotic and abiotic stress. In this study, we identified drought stress related miRNAs from sequencing reads obtained from second-generation sequencing. This method is useful for determination of miRNA expression profiles when genomic sequences are not available and for identification of putative miRNA by aligning reads with sequences from miRBase. Here, we present identification of a family of drought responsive miRNAs from potato plants, stu-miR172c, stu-miR172d, and stu-miR172e, and show expression profiles obtained in response to drought stress as well as their target mRNAs.