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Updated: Jul 10, 2026

A Bioinformatics Pipeline to Accurately and Efficiently Analyze the MicroRNA Transcriptomes in Plants
Published on: January 21, 2020
Methylation as a crucial step in plant microRNA biogenesis
Bin Yu1, Zhiyong Yang, Junjie Li
1Waksman Institute, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA.
Abstract:
Methylation on the base or the ribose is prevalent in eukaryotic ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs) and is thought to be crucial for ribosome biogenesis and function. Artificially introduced 2'-O-methyl groups in small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) can stabilize siRNAs in serum without affecting their activities in RNA interference in mammalian cells. Here, we show that plant microRNAs (miRNAs) have a naturally occurring methyl group on the ribose of the last nucleotide. Whereas methylation of rRNAs depends on guide RNAs, the methyltransferase protein HEN1 is sufficient to methylate miRNA/miRNA* duplexes. Our studies uncover a new and crucial step in plant miRNA biogenesis and have profound implications in the function of miRNAs.
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