MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are important posttranscriptional regulators and
act by recognizing and binding to sites in their target messenger RNAs
(mRNAs). They are present in nearly all eukaryotes, in particular in
plants, where they play important roles in developmental and stress
response processes by targeting mRNAs for cleavage or translational
repression. MiRNAs have been shown to have a crucial role in gene
expression regulation, but so far only a few miRNA targets in plants
have been experimentally validated. Based on the number of identified
genes, on the number of experimentally validated miRNAs and on the
fact that one miRNA often regulates multiple genes, a long list of yet
unidentified targets is to be expected. Here, we present a novel miRNA
target prediction method for plants, that incorporates an evolutionary
approach. With this approach, we intend to understand whether a
transcript shows evidence of exhibiting a sequence bias towards either
eliciting or avoiding target sites for a particular miRNA.