Peike Sheng

Abstract MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short RNAs that regulate gene expression, critical for development and disease. Residing in Argonaute (AGO) proteins, miRNAs target messenger RNAs via complementary base-pairing. Current miRNA-target databases rely on indirect data from AGO crosslinking immunoprecipitation (AGO-CLIP). In contrast, CLASH (Crosslinking, Ligation, and Sequencing of Hybrids) employs proximity ligation within AGO complexes, providing direct miRNA-target interaction evidence.

Abstract MicroRNAs (miRNAs) interact with the target mRNAs to induce translational repression and mRNA degradation. Interestingly, miRNAs themselves can turnover rapidly when binding to a target RNA with extensive complementarity, a phenomenon called target-directed miRNA degradation (TDMD). To date, all validated TDMD “triggers” can induce miRNA degradation reside in non-coding regions of the RNA.

Abstract Plants rapidly induce strong abscisic acid (ABA) signaling in response to stress, but how they weaken ABA signaling to resume normal growth after stress is unclear.