IDENTIFICATION OF MICRORNAS IN 12 PLANT SPECIES OF FABACEAE

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are tiny, non-coding and regulatory RNAs approximately 21 nucleotides in length.They are reported in various plants but still needs discovery in important plant species. The 12 plant species ofFabaceae were subjected this time to identify their miRNAs. The comparative genomics approaches withcombination of various bioinformatics’ tools were applied to find the novel miRNAs. This research leads to thefinding of 29 miRNAs belonging to 13 miRNA families. From the 29 miRNAs, nine belongs to Arachis duranensis,four to Lotus japonicas, three to each Pisum sativum and Arachis hypogaea, two to each Arachis ipaensis andPhaseolus vulgaris and one to each Cicer arietinum, Phaseolus acutifolius, Lupinus luteus, Glycyrrhiza uralensis,Robinia pseudoacacia and Lathyrus odoratus. These findings will be useful in the future to design and developdesirable traits in the 12 plant species of Fabaceae