Plant development is a complex process influenced by exogenous and endogenous elements.A series of postembryonic developmental events is involved to form the final architecture and contend with the changing environment.MicroRNA(miRNA) is one of endogenous non-coding RNAs,which plays an important role in plant developmental regulation.In this review,we summarized 34 miRNA families that are closely associated with plant development.Among these families,nine are expressed only in specific organs,whereas 20 families are expressed in at least two different organs.It is known that some miRNAs are expressed across most processes of plant growth,while some appear only at particular developmental stages or under special environmental conditions such as drought,waterlogging and short-day time.These miRNAs execute their diverse functions by regulating developmental gene expression levels,interacting with phytohormone signaling response,participating in the biogenesis of ta-siRNAs and affecting the production of miRNAs.
Plant protein-protein interaction networks have not been identified by large-scale experiments. In order to better understand the protein interactions in rice, the Predicted Rice Interactome Network (PRIN; http://bis.zju.edu.cn/ prin/) presented 76,585 predicted interactions involving 5,049 rice proteins. After mapping genomic features of rice (GO annotation, subcellular localization prediction, and gene expression), we found that a well-annotated and biologically significant network is rich enough to capture many significant functional linkages within higher-order biological systems, such as pathways and biological processes. Furthermore, we took MADS-box do- main-containing proteins and circadian rhythm signaling pathways as examples to demonstrate that functional protein complexes and biological pathways could be effectively expanded in our predicted network. The expanded molecular network in PRIN has considerably improved the capability of these analyses to integrate existing knowledge and provide novel insights into the function and coordination of genes and gene networks.
