Fig. 2.

Heat map representation for expression patterns of 15 miRNAs across different tissues

The expression profile data of 15 miRNAs in leaves, buds, shoots, and sepals were obtained through quantitative real-time PCR. The equation R=2^{−(C_t1−C_t2)} was used to calculate the relative expression levels (R), in which C _t1 is the C _t value of TCP genes, while C _t2 represents the C _t value of the reference gene. The software MultiExperiment Viewer (MeV) was employed to generate the heat map for gene expression patterns. We did not include miR-399 because it was not expressed in all tested four cotton tissues