REVIEW article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress
RNA Interference Shapes Stress Responses in Arabidopsis thaliana
Provisionally accepted
- 1Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy
- 2Institute of Agricultural Biology and Biotechnology, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome, Italy
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RNA interference (RNAi) is a crucial regulatory mechanism in plants, enabling dynamic responses to environmental stresses. Small RNAs (sRNAs), including miRNAs and siRNAs, guide stress-responsive gene silencing and can act beyond the cell of origin through systemic movement and uptake, enhancing plant adaptability. Central to these pathways are ARGONAUTE (AGO) proteins, whose stress-regulated expression and diverse roles at the molecular level contribute to finely tuned responses. This review integrates current progress in sRNAs systemic signaling, stress-responsive RNAi mechanisms, and AGO protein diversity into a coherent framework for understanding RNAi-driven stress adaptation. Emerging approaches such as high-resolution sRNA sequencing and single-cell transcriptomics are now enabling a deeper understanding of RNAi regulation with improved spatial and temporal resolution.
Keywords: RNA Interference, microRNA, Argonaute Proteins, stress response, Arabidopsis thaliana
Received: 04 Sep 2025; Accepted: 04 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 De Meo, Baldisseri, Loreti and Perata. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Anna Baldisseri, anna.baldisseri@santannapisa.it
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