Phyto-miRNA: A molecule with beneficial abilities for plant biotechnology

The discovery of the phenomenon of gene silencing in 1990s opened new doors to biotechnology and plant breeding in order to supply food security. Food Security, as defined by FAO, it exists when all people, at all times, have economic access to safe, sufficient and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for a healthy and active life. Due to the need to ensure food security and also gene silencing potentials, research in this field began with astonishing speed and even it still continues. In this field, miRNA-associated gene silencing especially attracted the attention of scientists in order to decrypt the genes involved in process such as plant growth and development, metabolism, signal transduction, response against environmental stresses, nodule development in legumes and inducement male sterility. In addition, miRNA found a lot of applications in plant biotechnology like miRNA-based molecular markers and miRNA-based molecular breeding for plants improvement. Given to the growing importance of plant miRNAs (Phyto-miRNAs) in biotechnology and expansion of their applications in molecular breeding, it is necessary to review miRNA in an up-to-date schema. In this study, it was presented both the necessary foundations of miRNAs and their important uses in plant sciences, such as molecular markers and metabolic engineering. As a result, we hope to expand the use of artificial miRNAs in plants engineering.