Review Article Review of Current Methodological Approaches for Characterizing MicroRNAs in Plants

Advances inmolecular biology have led to some surprising discoveries. One of these includes the complexities of RNA and its role in gene expression. One particular class of RNA called microRNA (miRNA) is the focus of this paper. We will first briefly look at some of the characteristics and biogenesis of miRNA in plant systems. The remainder of the paper will go into details of three different approaches used to identify and study miRNA. These include two reverse genetics approaches: computation (bioinformatics) and experimental, and one rare forward genetics approach. We also will summarize how to measure and quantify miRNAs, and how to detect their possible targets in plants. Strengths and weaknesses of each methodological approach are discussed. Copyright © 2009 Turgay Unver et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 1