Figure 3.

miR160 targets the class C auxin response factors (ARF) in potato. (a) Cleavage site mapping assay revealed that StARF10, StARF16 and StARF17 undergo miR160-guided cleavage. The arrow and the numbers indicate the site at which miR160 cleaves the ARFs and the frequency with which we were able to recover cleaved targets using RLM-RACE assay. (b-d) qRT-PCR-based expression analysis of StARF10 (b), StARF16 (c) and StARF17 (d) in the leaves of WT, miR160-OE-1 and miR160-KD-1 leaf samples. Bars indicate mean ± SD from four biological replicates. Statistically significant differences compared to WT samples were estimated using Student’s unpaired t-test (p < .05, two-tailed), ns indicates not significant. The expression analysis was performed twice with similar results. (e) The expression profile of StARF10, StARF16 and StARF17 transcripts across various tissue types as analyzed by the RNA-seq data set from the PGSC database. Red arrow indicates the tissue with the highest expression for each transcript.