The plant mir-166 microRNA precursor is a small non-coding RNA gene. This microRNA (miRNA) has now been predicted or experimentally confirmed in a wide range of plant species. microRNAs are transcribed as ~70 nucleotide precursors and subsequently processed by the Dicer enzyme to give a ~22 nucleotide product. In this case the mature sequence comes from the 3' arm of the precursor, and both Arabidopsis thaliana and rice genomes contain a number of related miRNA precursors which give rise to almost identical mature sequences. The mature products are thought to have regulatory roles through complementarity to messenger RNA.