Plant long noncoding RNAs: biologically relevant and mechanistically intriguing.

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) form a group of RNAs greater than 200 nucleotides exhibiting low or no coding potential, which are involved in diverse biological functions through their molecular interaction with proteins, DNA or other RNAs. With the emergence of advanced high-throughput RNA sequencing technologies, tens of thousands of novel long noncoding RNAs have been identified in plant transcriptomes in the last decade. More importantly, functional studies revealed that several lncRNAs play key regulatory roles in plant development and stress responses. In this review, we mainly focus on summarizing recent progresses uncovering regulatory roles and mechanisms of lncRNAs during plant life cycle, and briefly discuss the possible biotechnological applications of lncRNAs for plant breeding.