PAmiRDB: A web resource for plant miRNAs targeting viruses.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged to be essential constituents of host antiviral-defense mechanisms. The miRNA mediated antiviral mechanism was first experimentally established in animals, which proved that host miRNAs regulate viral gene expression by targeting the animal virus mRNAs. There are comparatively fewer reports about such interactions in plants, however, artificial miRNA studies prove that miRNAs play similar antiviral role in plants too. To explore the extent of this phenomenon in plant genomes, and in the absence of any publicly available resource for prediction of plant miRNAs targeting viruses, we were motivated to predict such interactions of plant miRNAs and viral genes. The intriguing results of the predictions are compiled as a database, which we have named as PAmiRDB. The current version of PAmiRDB includes more than 2600 plant miRNAs and their specific interactions with corresponding targets in approximately 500 viral species (predominantly from the major plant-infecting virus families of geminiviruses and potyviruses). PAmiRDB is a database of known plant miRNAs and their predicted targets in virus genomes. The innovative database query-interface enables global and comprehensive investigation of such predicted interactions between host miRNAs and viral genes. The database integrated-tools also helps researchers to design experiments to confirm such interactions. PAmiRDB is available at http://bioinfo.icgeb.res.in/pamirdb.