The role of long non-coding RNAs in abiotic stress tolerance in plants

Abstract

Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) are a family of regulatory RNAs, which do not encode mRNA, rRNA or tRNA, found in a variety of organisms including plants. Different classes of ncRNAs have been identifi ed based on their length and their position in the genome, including small ncRNAs (microRNAs and small-interfering RNAs), natural antisense transcripts (NATs), and long intronic/intergenic ncRNAs (lncRNAs, 200nt or longer). Recent advances in next-generation sequencing technologies and computational analysis for transcriptome profi ling have led to the genome-wide identifi cation of ncRNAs. Functional characterization of these ncRNAs has implicated them to play a role in a wide range of cellular functions, such as epigenetic silencing, transcriptional regulation, and RNA metabolism. Emerging evidence suggest that several lncRNAs play important roles in many fundamental biological processes including growth and development as well as abiotic stress responses. Recent fi ndings on the roles of lncRNAs in the aforementioned plant processes are summarized in this chapter.