Biology and Biotechnology of Environmental Stress Tolerance in Plants, Volume 3: Sustainable Approaches for

Enhan

Roychoudhury (Ed.)

© 202

ylor & Francis)

with CRC Press (Ta

nmental Stress Tole

ss, Inc

ca

cing Enviro

4 Apple A

demic Pre

rance. Aryadeep

. Co-published

CHAPTER 9

Small RNAs – The Big Players in

Developing Salt-Resistant Plants

ANUP KUMAR SARKAR^1,2 and SANJOY SADHUKHAN^2*

1Department of Botany, Dukhulal Nibaran Chandra College,

Aurangabad – 742201, Murshidabad, West Bengal, India

2Plant Molecular Biology Laboratory, Department of Botany,

Raiganj University, Raiganj – 733134, Uttar Dinajpur, West Bengal, India

*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Salinity is a severe threat to plants which can affect almost all developmental

processes of the plant. Salinity is often considered a complex constraint

that induces the regulation of many genes with a significant function in the

mechanism of salt resistance. Researchers and scientists are working hard to

uncover the molecular processes behind salt tolerance in both halophytic and

non-halophytic plants. In many studies, it was found that a special category

of RNA, often called non-coding small RNA or simply small RNAs (sRNAs)

can execute different biological processes in plants against salt-induced

stresses. sRNAs are usually 20–30 nucleotides long and directly participated

in the regulation of almost 30% or more of the genes in a cell and are broadly

categorized into two broad groups microRNA (miRNA) and short interfering

RNAs (siRNAs). Gradual scientific efforts have reported the significance of

different subcategories of sRNAs including microRNAs (miRNAs), short

interfering RNAs (siRNAs), natural antisense transcript derived siRNAs

(nat-siRNA), trans-acting siRNA (ta-siRNA), etc., in salinity stress response

in the plant. To date, many halophytic and non-halophytic plants have been