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.