Plant interactions with biotic and abiotic stresses are complex and entail changes at the transcriptional, cellular and physiological level. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small (∼20-24 nt), non-coding RNAs that play a vital role in wide range of biological processes involved in regulation of gene expression through translation inhibition or degradation of their target mRNAs during stress conditions. Therefore, identification of miRNAs and their targets are of immense value in understanding the regulatory networks triggered during stress. Advancement in computational approaches has opened up ways for the prediction of miRNAs and their possible targets with functional pathways. Our objective was to identify miRNA and their potential targets involved in both biotic and abiotic stresses in maize. A total of 2,019,524 downloaded ESTs from dbEST were processed and trimmed by Seq Clean. The program trashed 264,000 and trimmed 284,979 sequences and the resulting 1,755,534 sequences were submitted for clustering and assemble in maize.Climate change, along with current agricultural practices, is going to pose a significant challenge for future food security, especially in developing countries. Orphan crops can help mitigate this threat due to their inherent properties of stress tolerance and nutrition content. Industrialization of agriculture has left these minor crops behind in terms of domestication. As a result, the potential of these crops is underutilized. These crops can be a game-changer in the long term if necessary steps are taken to improve the quality as well as quantity of yield. Concerted efforts by many groups around the world have been taken for research and development of these crops. Besides, the unique properties of these crops have caught the media attention, which hails these crops as superfoods. Favourable government policies to promote these crops can help in the large-scale adoption of these crops by the farming community. Besides, the stress-resilience of these crops can help boost the sustainability of agriculture and ensure food security for future generations.Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is an emerging new viral pathogen that causes severe respiratory disease. SARS-CoV-2 is responsible for the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. As there are no confirmed antiviral drugs or vaccines currently available for the treatment of COVID-19, discovering potent inhibitors or vaccines are urgently required for the benefit of humanity. The glycosylated Spike protein (S-protein) directly interacts with human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor through the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of S-protein. As the S-protein is exposed to the surface and is essential for entry into the host, the S-protein can be considered as a first-line therapeutic target for antiviral therapy and vaccine development. In silico screening, docking, and molecular dynamics simulation studies were performed to identify repurposing drugs using DrugBank and PubChem library against the RBD of S-protein. The study identified a laxative drug, Bisoxatin (DB09219), which is used for the treatment of constipation and preparation of the colon for surgical procedures. It binds nicely at the S-protein-ACE2 interface by making substantial π-π interactions with Tyr505 in the 'Site 1' hook region of RBD and hydrophilic interactions with Glu406, Ser494, and Thr500. Bisoxatin consistently binds to the protein throughout the 100 ns simulation. Taken together, we propose that the discovered molecule, Bisoxatin may be a promising repurposable drug molecule to develop new chemical libraries for inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 entry into the host.Modeling a protein functional network in concerned species is an efficient approach for identifying novel genes in certain biological pathways. Tea plant (Camellia sinensis) is an important commercial crop abundant in numerous characteristic secondary metabolites (e.g., polyphenols, alkaloids, alkaloids) that confer tea quality and health benefits. Decoding novel genes responsible for tea characteristic components is an important basis for applied genetic improvement and metabolic engineering. Herein, a high-quality protein functional network for tea plant (TeaPoN) was predicted using cross-species protein functional associations transferring and integration combined with a stringent biological network criterion control. TeaPoN contained 31,273 nonredundant functional interactions among 6,634 tea proteins (or genes), with general network topological properties such as scale-free and small-world. We revealed the modular organization of genes related to the major three tea characteristic components (theanine, caffeine, catechin) in TeaPoN, which served as strong evidence for the utility of TeaPoN in novel gene mining. Importantly, several case studies regarding gene identification for tea characteristic components were presented. To aid in the use of TeaPoN, a concise web interface for data deposit and novel gene screening was developed (http//teapon.wchoda.com). We believe that TeaPoN will serve as a useful platform for functional genomics studies associated with characteristic secondary metabolites in tea plant.Post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS)-mediated gene silencing exploits the cellular mechanism wherein transcripts having sequence similarity to the double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) molecules present in the cell will be subjected to degradation. PTGS is closely related to natural processes such as RNA-mediated virus resistance and cross-protection in plants.  https://www.selleckchem.com/products/10-dab-10-deacetylbaccatin.html  Gene silencing and the cellular machinery for affecting this phenomenon might have evolved as a natural protective measure against viral infection in plants. In PTGS, small interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules of 21-23 nucleotides length act as homology guides for triggering the systemic degradation of transcripts homologous to the siRNA molecules. PTGS phenomenon, first discovered in transgenic petunia plants harbouring chalcone synthase gene and termed co-suppression, has been subsequently exploited to target specific gene transcripts for degradation leading to manifestation of desirable traits in crop plants. Targeted gene silencing has been achieved either through the introduction of DNA constructs encoding dsRNA or antisense RNA or by deploying cosuppression constructs producing siRNAs against the transcript of interest.