Jones-Rhoades Matthew W, Bartel David P, Bartel Bonnie
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA.
Annu Rev Plant Biol. 2006;57:19-53. doi: 10.1146/annurev.arplant.57.032905.105218.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, endogenous RNAs that regulate gene expression in plants and animals. In plants, these approximately 21-nucleotide RNAs are processed from stem-loop regions of long primary transcripts by a Dicer-like enzyme and are loaded into silencing complexes, where they generally direct cleavage of complementary mRNAs. Although plant miRNAs have some conserved functions extending beyond development, the importance of miRNA-directed gene regulation during plant development is now particularly clear. Identified in plants less than four years ago, miRNAs are already known to play numerous crucial roles at each major stage of development-typically at the cores of gene regulatory networks, targeting genes that are themselves regulators, such as those encoding transcription factors and F-box proteins.
微小RNA（miRNA）是一类小的内源性RNA，可调控植物和动物的基因表达。在植物中，这些长度约为21个核苷酸的RNA由一种类似Dicer的酶从长链初级转录本的茎环区域加工而来，并被加载到沉默复合体中，在那里它们通常指导互补mRNA的切割。尽管植物miRNA具有一些超越发育阶段的保守功能，但现在miRNA介导的基因调控在植物发育过程中的重要性已尤为明确。miRNA在不到四年前才在植物中被发现，目前已知它们在发育的每个主要阶段都发挥着众多关键作用——通常处于基因调控网络的核心，靶向那些本身就是调控因子的基因，例如编码转录因子和F-box蛋白的基因。
