PMTED: a plant microRNA target expression database

Xiuli Sun, Boquan Dong, Lingjie Yin, Rongzhi Zhang, Wei Du, Dongfeng Liu, Nan Shi, Aili Li, Yanchun Liang, Long Mao

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are identified in nearly all plants where they play important roles in development and stress responses by target mRNA cleavage or translation repression. MiRNAs exert their functions by sequence complementation with target genes and hence their targets can be predicted using bioinformatics algorithms. In the past two decades, microarray technology has been employed to study genes involved in important biological processes such as biotic response, abiotic response, and specific tissues and developmental stages, many of which are miRNA targets. Despite their value in assisting research work for plant biologists, miRNA target genes are difficult to access without pre-processing and assistance of necessary analytical and visualization tools because they are embedded in a large body of microarray data that are scattered around in public databases.