title: MicroRNAs with macro-effects on plant stress responses.
abstract: Being sessile organisms, plants often have to face challenges posed by environmental stresses. To minimize the cellular damage caused by stress, plants have evolved highly complex but well-coordinated adaptive responses operating at the transcriptional, post-transcriptional, translational and post-translational levels. A thorough understanding of regulation at all levels will provide better tools to improve plant's performance under stress. Dramatic changes in the levels of several hundreds or even thousands of mRNAs/proteins were evident under stress as revealed by high-throughput microarray and proteome analyses and such changes were thought to be dependent on transcriptional (induction or suppression of genes) or post-translational regulation (protein stability and degradation). However, recently discovered 21-24 nt small RNAs (microRNAs [miRNAs] and small-interfering RNAs [siRNAs]), which regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level, are also modulated during stress and possibly contribute to the stress-induced changes in profiles of mRNAs or proteins. This review highlights our understanding of the role of small RNAs in plant stress responses.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078, USA. ramanjulu.sunkar@okstate.edu
authors.forename: Ramanjulu
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sunkar
mesh_terms: D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D018521:Plant Physiological Phenomena; D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics*; D018749:RNA, Plant / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D034741:RNA, Small Interfering / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D013312:Stress, Physiological
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs; D018749:RNA, Plant; D034741:RNA, Small Interfering