4.1 A powerful full-length lncRNA resource in cassava was
collected
Cold stress is one of the major environmental factors that limit plant
growth, productivity, and geographic distribution. Most tropical plant
species are sensitive to cold stress due to the lack of capacity for
cold acclimation. Over the past decades, genetic and transcriptomic
screens have identified many genes involved in cold stress response.
Many researchers tried to enhance the cold tolerance of cassava using
the cold-responsive gene and investigated the corresponding mechanism.
However, the regulatory pathways that mediate the cold stress responses
are far from being understood. The lncRNAs are important regulators of
gene expression. The discovery of lncRNAs has filled gaps in
cold-responsive regulatory pathways. In this study, many polys (A)+
lncRNAs were identified systematically, and their expression profile
under normal or cold-treated conditions was analyzed using Iso-seq and
RNA-seq. Many full-length lncRNAs were found for the first time to be
specifically expressed during cold treatment. Therefore, the lncRNAs
identified in this paper represent a valuable addition to
the cassava lncRNA collection, providing a rich resource for the
community to investigate the biology of lncRNAs in plants further.