Novel miRNA identification was carried out using miRCat, selecting default parameters except for read abundance (2 or greater; Moxon et al.,2008), and predicted miRNA precursors were folded using RNAfold from the Vienna RNA package (Hofacker, 2003). The novelty of miRNAs was
confirmed by sequence alignment of individual species to the miRBase registry (version 18) using BLASTN and authorizing a maximum of two mismatches. miRNA abundance profiling was done using the miRProf algorithm, allowing two mismatches and/or overhangs for the sequence search and selecting default values for output grouping (Moxon et al., 2008).miRNA target predictions were carried out with the Target Finder algorithm(Allen et al., 2005; Fahlgren et al., 2007). miR171 family sequence alignments were performed using Clustal 2.1 and sequences from the miRBase registry (version 18). Promoter analyses were carried out through the Plant CisActing Regulatory DNA Elements database (www.dna.affrc.go.jp/PLACE/;Higo et al., 1998).