MicroRNAs in Cotton

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are an extensive class of newly discovered small regulatory RNAs with 20-24 nucleotides in length. Since it was first discovered in plants in 2002, it has been attracting the attention of many plant scientists because of its importance in plant growth and development. However, most of our knowledge about plant miRNAs comes from the investigation of model plant species, including Arabidopsis and rice. Only very recently, several reports have been published on the identification and expression analysis of miRNAs in cotton. Based on the conservation and unique characteristics of miRNAs, several tens of miRNAs have been predicted by comparative genome-based EST/GSS analysis. The next-generation deep-sequencing technologies, such as Solexa, provide a new platform to identify cotton miRNAs,