Abstract
In plants, RNA interference (RNAi) causes gene silencing in which small RNAs (sRNAs) inhibit gene expression by causing sequence-specific degradation of target transcripts. Several RNAi-based tools have been developed and optimized to study gene function and trait improvements in plants. One recent strategy based on miRNA-triggered secondary small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) through trans-acting siRNA (tasiRNA) pathway has been developed for efficient gene silencing. In plants, miRNA-mediated cleavage of noncoding TAS RNAs triggers production of tasiRNAs which cause downregulation of one or more target genes. MiRNA-induced gene silencing (MIGS) works on this module in which a single miRNA target site fused with a target gene fragment in a vector triggers production of tasiRNAs and subsequent target gene silencing in plant cells. This technology has been successfully employed to silence one or more target genes to study their role in plant development and stress response. It has gained much attention due to its ease of design and capacity to silence multiple paralogous genes simultaneously. Further, MIGS vector designing does not require whole genome information, making it suitable to be used in plant species which lacks this information. This chapter summarizes recent progress in MIGS and its application in gene function studies and trait improvements.
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