Non-coding RNAs and their role in enhancing virus resistance in plants

Plants are vulnerable to several diseases that result in significant yield losses and pose a serious threat to food security. Through evolution, plants have developed various strategies to cope with viral infections. In addition to the involvement of protein-coding genes as key regulators of plant immunity, growing evidence suggests that non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) play an important role in the plant immune response against viruses. This article summarizes the different types of ncRNAs (Small ncRNAs and long ncRNAs), the classes within small ncRNAs, their functions, biogenesis, long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) databases and their promising role in mediating virus resistance in plants. These findings will help understand how ncRNAs regulate plant immunity and may lead to the development of new approaches for breeding virus-resistant crops in the future.