SECONDARY STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF MICRORNA AND THEIR PRECURSORS IN PLANTS

It has been a general belief over a long period of time that RNA molecules were essential molecules involvedonly in the process of protein synthesis as carriers of genetic. However recent studies have shown that most of thecells RNAome do not encode proteins. The role and diversity of these numerous non-coding RNAs has not beenelucidated till date. The most unique of this plethora of non coding molecules are a class of small RNA molecules of ~21 nucleotides in length which has been reported by many workers to be involved in many of the cell process such ascontrols, defense and development. Short interfering RNAs (siRNA) and Micro RNA (miRNA) represent the two mostabundant class of the non coding RNA cascade and both of them are key players in the process of RNA Interference.The current work focuses on the identification and development of secondary structures of available plant microRNAsequences and establishment of a relation between the formation of secondary structures and their free energy values.