Tolerance-enhancing microRNA: A new therapeutic target for plants

MicroRNA (miRNA), a revolutionizing class of small sized (20-24bp) and noncoding RNAs, have the property of silencing and modulating gene expression in different eukaryotic signaling pathways. Plant miRNAs are identified as the molecules that are responsive to environmental and individual factors and thus help in the expression profiling of the plant systems. There are various approaches, as to how MIR gene transcription and engineering helps to manipulate the different processes in the cytoplasm. Plants predominantly being sessile, inevitably encounter several stress responses and adverse physiological conditions, hampering the yield and produce. Plant systems grow tolerance by modulating the miRNA genes and subsequently withstand the abiotic and biotic stresses. Recent findings elaborate on how the miRNA act as critical transcriptional regulators for responding to stress conditions in a sequence specific manner. This may help to facilitate the economic viability and importance of the crops and plants. Stress induced miRNA enables the down regulation of the negative stress tolerance regulators and the stress inhibited miRNAs bring about the accumulation of positive regulators. The plant growth and development is directly or indirectly affected with the miRNA response and alteration in condition of abiotic and biotic stresses. This chapter tends to deliberate an optimistic insight and current understanding of differential synthesis of plant based miRNA networks responsible for alleviating biotic as well as abiotic stresses in major vegetative plants and thus providing recent updates on the growing topic of research, with the consideration of existing drawbacks.