Plant Non-Coding Rnas And The New Paradigms

Non-coding RNAs vary greatly in length, shape and function. Growing interest and recent evidence have identified some of them as essential elements for life, as well as for environmental adaptation and development. Since non-coding RNAs by definition do not code for proteins, their ever-growing roles pose a paradigm shift in biology. In this chapter, we will discuss our current knowledge of two distinct plant non-coding RNAs: long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and microRNAs (miRNAs). These two classes of non-coding transcripts are relatively well characterized in plants, and regulate gene expression through distinct modes of action. We thus anticipate that our current mechanistic knowledge of lncRNAs and miRNAs will provide the basis for future studies of non-coding RNAs in plant genetics and epigenetics.