Title

High GC content: Critical parameter for predicting stress regulated miRNAs in Arabidopsis thaliana

Authors

Akaash Kumar Mishra, Seep Agarwal, Chakresh Kumar Jain, Vibha Rani*

Affiliation

Department of Biotechnology, Jaypee Institute of Information Technology University, NOIDA 201307, India

Email

Vibha.rani@jiit.ac.in

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

Received June 09, 2009; Revised July 25, 2009; Accepted September 11, 2009; Published October 11, 2009

Abstract

Plants like Arabidopsis thaliana are convenient model systems to study fundamental questions related to regulation of the stress transcriptome in response to stress challenges. Microarray results of the Arabidopsis transcriptome indicate that several genes could be upregulated during multiple stresses. High-salinity, drought, and low temperature are three common environmental stress factors that seriously influence plant growth and development worldwide. Recently, microRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as a class of gene expression regulators that have also been linked to stress responses. However, the relationship between miRNA expression and stress responses is just beginning to be explored. Here we have computationally analyzed 123 non redundant miRNA sequences reported for Arabidopsis thaliana, including 17 miRNA sequences which were reported to be stress regulated in literature. A significant increase in the GC content of stress regulated miRNA sequences was observed which further extends the view that miRNAs act as ubiquitous regulators under stress conditions. GC content may also be considered as a critical parameter for predicting stress regulated miRNAs in plants like Arabidopsis thaliana.

Keywords

Arabidopsis thaliana, Stress, miRNAs, transcriptome, miRBase, GC content, Bioinformatics

Citation

Akash et al., Bioinformation 4(4): 151-154 (2009)

Edited by

P. Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.