TABLE 2.
Abiotic-stress related miRNAs in maize.
| Stress | Plant part | Key | Stage | Regulation | Target genes | References |
| Submergence | Roots | miR166, miR167, miR171, miR399, osa-miR396-like | Early phase | Up | Transcription factors, including HD-ZIP, auxin response factor, SCL, and WRKY domain protein | Zhang et al., 2008 |
| miR159, ath-miR395-like, ptc-miR474-like, osa-miR528-like | Early phase | Down | Carbohydrate and energy metabolism, including starch synthase, invertase, malic enzyme, and ATPase | |||
| Salinity | Roots | miR162, miR168 and miR395 | – | Up | AGO1, DCL1 for homeostasis and feedback regulation, NADP dependent malic protein, ATP sulfurylase | Ding et al., 2019 |
| miR156, miR164, miR167, miR396 | – | Down | NAC1, ARF8, R2R3 MYBSBP-domain protein, cytochrome oxidase | |||
| Salinity and drought | Seedlings | miR156, miR164, miR166, miR168, miR171, miR319 | – | Both | AGO1, leaf and shoot development, hormone signaling | Kong et al., 2010 |
| Drought | – | miR1, miR3, miR6, miR479, miR782, miR815a, miR820 | – | Both | Signal transduction, transcription regulation, and biotic or abiotic stress responses | Xu et al., 2010 |
| Drought | Seedlings | miR156, miR159, miR319 | – | Up | SPL6, SPL7 and SPL11, MYB33 and MYB101, TCP transcription factors | Li et al., 2013 |
| Drought | Seedlings | miR159, miR168 | – | Up | Transcription factor MYB55, Argonaute 1 | Wang et al., 2014 |
| Drought, hormone and salinity | Seedlings | miR169 | Short term | Down | ZmNF-YA14 | Luan et al., 2014 |
| Long term | Up | |||||
| Drought | Seedlings | miR156, miR159, miR160, miR169, miR166, miR393, miR395 | – | Up | SPL, MYB, ARF, NFY-A, HD-ZIPIII, TIR, APS/AST | Aravind et al., 2017 |
| Submergence | Seedlings | miR172a, miR164a | – | Down | ERTF-RAP2-7, POD-1 | Azahar et al., 2020 |
| Drought | Seedlings Shoot |
miR164 | – | Down | MYB, NAC | Liu et al., 2019 |
| Root | miR159, miR390 | – | Up | MYB, LRR | ||
| miR398 | – | Down | SPL | |||
| Water deficit | Seedlings | miR399e,i,j-3p | – | Up | ubiquitin conjugating enzymes | Seeve et al., 2019 |
| High temperature | Leaves | miR172a/b | – | Up | AP2/EREBP TF | Zhang et al., 2019b |
| miR164, miR169i, miR156a/j/k, miR159, miR166a, miR396a, miR5381, miRn202 | – | Down | NAC, SBP, SPL, MYB, HD-ZIP, GFR, VPS24 TFs | |||
| Chilling | Seedlings | miR408, miR528 | – | Up | CYCD1/5, GRF1, TCP, ARF, CYCB2 | Aydinoglu, 2020 |
| miR319, miR395 | – | Down | GAMYB, CMT | |||
| Submergence and drought | Seedlings | miR156, miR159, miR164, miR166, miR167, miR169, miR396, miR398, miR408, | – | Down | SPL, NAC, GAMYB, GRF, MYB, ARF, NFYA, PLC, LAC, SOD, SBP1, bZIP | Sepúlveda-García et al., 2020 |