High Throughput Sequencing of circRNAs in Tomato Leaves Responding to Multiple Stresses of Drought and Heat

Our aim is to study the roles of a new emerging group of non-coding RNAs, circRNAs, in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) plants grown at the combination of drought and heat, two of the most usual stress conditions known to frequently happen in field. Tomato seedlings from cultivar Jinling Meiyu' were treated without stresses (control), at water shortage, high temperature and subjected the multiple stresses. In total, 467 circRNAs were identified with 87.82% from exon using high throughput sequencing technology. Among the circRNAs, 70 were from chr1 with the range from 23 to 49 from the other chromosomes. In detail, 156 circRNAs were shared in the four libraries, while 21, 17 and 36 circRNAs were only shown in drought, heat and multiple stresses libraries, respectively. Through a differential expression analysis, four, seven and nine circRNAs were differentially regulated in tomato at drought, heat and multiple stresses as compared with control. These circRNAs played roles on photosynthesis, starch and sucrose metabolism, RNA transport, RNA degradation, spliceosome, ribosome, etc. Our study underlined the potential role of circRNAs involved in the abiotic stress response in tomato, which might pave the way for studying biological roles of circRNAs responding to multiple stresses in plants.