Regulation of abiotic stress responses in plant by micro RNA: An Overview

Abiotic stress is one of the primary causes of crop losses worldwide. Plants are sessile organisms, so they have to come up with various adverse environmental conditions. The expression of several genes are up regulated and down regulated in response to stress. Micro RNAs play vital role in regulating the expression of most of the genes during stress, these are small non-coding RNA molecule of approximately 22 nucleotide in length, and play a pivotal role in controlling gene expression during developmental processes and stress responses in plants by attaching themselves to mRNAs for translational repression or target degradation. Plant miRNAs are found to be involved in most of the abiotic stress responses, such as drought, cold, salinity and nutrient deprivation and thus it plays important role in regulating abiotic stress in plants.