AUTHOR=Imran Muhammad , Liu Tengfei , Wang Zheng , Wang Min , Liu Shulin , Gao Xinyan , Wang Anning , Liu Songfeng , Tian Zhixi , Zhang Min TITLE=Evolutionary conservation of nested MIR159 structural microRNA genes and their promoter characterization in Arabidopsis thaliana JOURNAL=Frontiers in Plant Science VOLUME=13 YEAR=2022 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2022.948751 DOI=10.3389/fpls.2022.948751 ISSN=1664-462X ABSTRACT=
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous small RNAs, that are vital for gene expression regulation in eukaryotes. Whenever a pri-miRNA precursor includes another miRNA precursor, and both of these precursors may generate independent, non-overlapping mature miRNAs, we named them nested miRNAs. However, the extent of nested miR159 structural evolutionary conservation and its promoter characterization remains unknown. In this study, the sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis reveal that the MIR159 family is ancient, and its nested miR159 structures are evolutionary conserved in different plant species. The overexpression of ath-MIR159a, including the 1.2 kb downstream region, has no effect on rescuing the