In P. abies a lot of work in done on seed cone development but the genetic mechanism of male cone development is still not well studies. In Norway Spruce pollen cones are initiated at the base of annual shots in mid-July. We collected samples of early pollen-cone meristems and sequence their mRNA and small RNA fractions using Illumina RNA-seq technology. We will also use transcriptome assembly to detect transcript isoforms. This will result in us having gene expression levels for both mRNAs and miRNAs in relevant and matched samples and a set of reconstructed transcribed isoforms. This, in turn, will allow us to find what genes and miRNAs are present and active in pollen cone meristems and enable us to suggest what isoforms are regulated by miRNAs. We will also perform a complementary Oxford Nanopore sequencing of mRNA samples from pollen cone meristems and meristems from seed cones and vegetative shoots. Pollen-cone sequencing profiles will be compared with corresponding profiles from seed-cone and vegetative meristems.