Roles of microRNAs and histone modifications in enhancing stress tolerance in soybean and their applications in molecular breeding

Abstract

Soybean is an ancient crop domesticated from wild soybean (Glycine soja Sied. & Zucc) in East Asia 6,000–9,000 years ago and has been widely grown as human food and livestock feed in China, Korea, Japan, and the rest of the world since. Global climate change has led to a series of challenges in soybean cultivation and breeding. With the development of high-throughput genomic sequencing technologies, genomic information on soybeans is now more readily available and can be useful for molecular breeding. However, epigenetic regulations on crop development are still largely unexplored. In this review, we summarized the recent discoveries in the regulatory mechanisms underlying soybean adaptations to biotic and abiotic stresses, particularly with respect to histone modifications and microRNAs (miRNAs). Finally, we discussed the potential applications of this knowledge on histone modifications and miRNAs in soybean molecular breeding to improve crop performance in the changing environment.