In silico identification of micrornas and their targets in lentil

In this work, the in silico approach for identification and characterization of conserved miRNAs in lentil expressed sequence tags (ESTs) is adopted. For identification of novel miRNAs in lentil .EST sequences were searched for homology against known mature miRNAs of plant kingdom Viridiplantae in through online BLASTN. Comparative-genomics based computational identification resulted in 12 potential miRNA candidates belonging to 12 different miRNA families in lentil. Finally using the potential miRNAs of garlic, a total of 25 target genes were predicted and their probable functions were illustrated. Most of the lentil miRNA target genes which seem to encode growth, development, metabolism and stress response, disease resistances,etc. In near future, improved understanding in the molecular mechanisms of miRNAs in lentil plant may help in the development of novel and precise technique to understand some post-transcriptional gene silencing mechanism in response to stress tolerance.