Prediction of MicroRNAs Involved in Lignan and Cyanogenic Glycosides Biosynthesis of Flax (Linum usitatissimum L.)

Abstract MicroRNAs are short non-coding single-stranded molecules RNA with length 20–24 nucleotides that are of great importance to negative regulation of gene expression. In organisms, they participate in a wide spectrum of biological processes including differentiation, development, cell signalization, metabolism, reaction to biotic and abiotic stresses, reproduction, and many others. Lignans have a huge therapeutic potential thanks to their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antidiabetic, estrogenic and antiestrogenic features. Major role of cyanogenic glycosides lies in a releasing of hydrogen cyanide (HCN). Together with lignans play various roles in plant defence processes. Next generation sequencing blazes a trail in new “omic” approaches such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, epigenetics even panomics while an individual field of study is bioinformatics that develops computational algorithms for processing of these valuable data. In addition, a simple and often free of charge access to big amount of data as well as to bioinformatic algorithms and computational systems enable a comparison of individual genomes, transcriptomes, proteomes or metabolomes and an identification of conserved biosynthetic pathways and regulating elements in many organisms at the same time. The main aim of this research was to predict microRNA families involved in metabolic pathway of flax lignans and cyanogenic glycosides ( Linum usitatissimum L.). There have been identified 15 lignan and 10 cyanogenic glycosides regulating microRNA families occurred in the flax genome whereas 6 microRNA families are regulating both pathways.