Abstract
Crop yield is challenged every year worldwide by changing climatic conditions. The forecasted climatic scenario urgently demands stress-tolerant crop varieties to feed the ever-increasing global population. Molecular breeding and genetic engineering approaches have been frequently exploited for developing crops with desired agronomic traits. Recently, microRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as powerful molecules, which potentially serve as expression markers during stress conditions. The miRNAs are small non-coding endogenous RNAs, usually 20–24 nucleotides long, which mediate post-transcriptional gene silencing and fine-tune the regulation of many abiotic- and biotic-stress responsive genes in plants. The miRNAs usually function by specifically pairing with the target mRNAs, inducing their cleavage or repressing their translation. This review focuses on the exploration of the functional role of miRNAs in regulating plant responses to abiotic and biotic stresses. Moreover, a methodology is also discussed to mine stress-responsive miRNAs from the enormous amount of transcriptome data available in the public domain generated using next-generation sequencing (NGS). Considering the functional role of miRNAs in mediating stress responses, these molecules may be explored as novel targets for engineering stress-tolerant crop varieties.
Highlights
Increasing global population and livestock demand a substantial increase in the production of food and fodder
After a series of enzymatic reactions, pri-miRNAs fold into a stem-loop secondary structure to form mature miRNAs, which pair with respective target mRNAs/transcripts to destabilize them or inhibit protein translation [7,8,9].Several studies in the recent past have suggested versatile roles of miRNAs in plants, where they are involved in almost all biological and metabolic processes, including plant growth and development timing, tissue and organ differentiation, plant architecture, organ polarity, and response to various abiotic and biotic stresses [7,10,11,12,13,14]
Strategy, either engineered long non-coding RNA or circular RNA, called miRNA recognition elements (MRE) with high sequence similarity with target miRNA is transferred to the transgenic plant [184]
Summary
Increasing global population and livestock demand a substantial increase in the production of food and fodder. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) emerged as a novel target in the field of genetic engineering and have been exploited to develop high yield and stress-tolerant crop varieties [3,4,5,6]. After a series of enzymatic reactions, pri-miRNAs fold into a stem-loop secondary structure to form mature miRNAs, which pair with respective target mRNAs/transcripts to destabilize them or inhibit protein translation [7,8,9].Several studies in the recent past have suggested versatile roles of miRNAs in plants, where they are involved in almost all biological and metabolic processes, including plant growth and development timing, tissue and organ differentiation, plant architecture, organ polarity, and response to various abiotic and biotic stresses [7,10,11,12,13,14]. Understanding plant miRNA regulatory pathways equips us with novel tools for genetic engineering to further improve crop yield, quality, and abiotic and biotic stress tolerance in crop varieties
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