Quantitative gene expression data analysis requires efficient normalization to be really informative: as a consequence reference genes that are stably expressed in tested vs. control samples are used for results standardization. The identification of tissue-wide-expressed genes makes it easier to highlight the best set of candidate internal controls. While tissue-specific genes are often regulated by microRNA, housekeeping genes, being involved in cell maintenance and thus required in all miRNA expressing cells are not expected to be microRNA targets. In this work we have identified a set of tissue-wide expressed genes in grape which has then been functionally characterised and scanned for the presence vs. absence of putative miRNA target sites. The gene list obtained by this multi-evidence based procedure can be helpful to identify appropriate references in grape.
