The role of microRNAs and other endogenous small RNAs in plant stress responses

Identification of conserved Aquilegia coerulea microRNAs and their targets

“…Homologs of this locus were identified in O. sativa and P. trichocarpa but no miR530-binding site appears to be present in either gene. Moreover, we also included miRNA families that are not as distantly conserved but show representatives across more closely related plant lineages, including two monocot specific miRNA families (miR444 and miR528) (groups previously identified by (Willmann and Poethig, 2007;Sunkar et al, 2008)), a Brassicaceae specific miRNA family (miR824), and three Fabaceae specific miRNA families (mir1507, miR1509, and miR1510).…”

“…Introduction microRNAs (miRNAs) are a set of small (~22 nt) single-stranded non-coding RNAs in plants and animals that play an important role in regulating mRNA targets through cleavage and/or translational repression in a sequence specific manner (Chen, 2004;Jones-Rhoades et al, 2006). In plants, miRNAs have diverse roles including the regulation of leaf development (Palatnik et al, 2003), floral development (Cartolano et al, 2007), phase change (Aukerman and Sakai, 2003;Lauter et al, 2005), male and female reproductive development (Wu et al, 2006), root development (Boualem et al, 2008), and disease and environmental stress response (Shukla et al, 2008;Zhang et al, 2008b;Ding et al, 2009). …”

The obscure events contributing to the evolution of an incipient sex chromosome in Populus: a retrospective working hypothesis

“…There is also a disproportionately high occurrence of small (18-24 nt) microRNAs (miRNA) on chromosome XIX coincident to the region containing the putative gender-determining locus and the major cluster of NBS-LRR genes (Klevebring et al 2009). Such miRNAs are a class of posttranscriptional negative regulators that play a vital role in plant development and growth (Jones-Rhoades et al 2006;Shuklaa et al 2008;Henderson et al 2006;Chan et al 2005). A number of the identified miRNA are predicted to target the NBS-LRR disease resistance genes within the peritelomeric region of chromosome XIX.…”

Low and high ψ ways from post-transcriptional RNA regulation to drought tolerance

“…37 A candidate molecular switch for this may be the nuclear cap binding complex (nCBC) operating at the posttranscriptional level, involving splicing and small RNA regulation (see above) and resulting morphological alterations in the cuticle, typical to drought acclimation processes at high water potential.…”

“…40 A number of further examples may also be found in recent reviews covering this topic. 11,37 A serious difficulty in research of stress response regulation lies in that transcriptional, posttranscriptional and posttranslational layers often interact by various means forming a highly complex network. Taking just one example processing of splicing factors has been shown influenced by temperature stresses, giving a further circuit of regulation and multiplying output options of an input signal.…”