Small RNAs in tomato fruit and leaf development

Tomato fruit and leaf development offers excellent systems to study the evolution of gene regulation underlying development of different organs. We have identified over 350 and 700 small RNAs from tomato fruit and leaf, respectively. Except for conserved microRNAs, more than 90% of the small RNAs are unique to tomato. We confirmed expression of some conserved as well as novel putative microRNAs by Northern hybridization. Our results help form a basis for comparative studies on how small RNA-mediated gene expression has contributed to the evolution of common and distinct developmental pathways of fruits and leaves. We have established a website (http://ted.bti.cornell.edu/digital/sRNA/) for public access to all of our small RNA sequences, their expression patterns in respective tissues, and their matching genes or predicted target genes in a searchable manner.