Consistent with a functional role of miR396/GRFs in abiotic stress responses, GRF7 was recently demonstrated to function as a repressor of a wide range of osmotic stress-responsive genes, presumably to prevent growth inhibition under normal conditions. The implication of the miR396/GRFs regulatory system in biotic stress response has been recently reported. For example, miR396 and/or GRFs were shown to accumulate in plants treated with the Pseudomonas syringae DC3000 hrcC2 and flg22. In addition, we recently discovered key functional roles of miR396-targeted GRF1 and GRF3 in reprogramming of root cells during cyst nematode parasitism. We demonstrated that GRF1 and GRF3 are post-transcriptionally regulated by miR396 during cyst nematode infection and that gene expression Clofibric Acid change of miR396 or its targets GRF1 and GRF3 significantly reduced plant susceptibility to nematode infection. More importantly, we found that miR396/GRF1-GRF3 controls about 50% of the gene expression changes described in the syncytium induced by the beet cyst nematode Heterodera schachtii in Arabidopsis roots. Collectively, these data point to roles of GRFs in controlling the overlaps between defense signaling and developmental pathways. In this study, we identified a large number of putative targets of GRF1 and GRF3 by comparing gene expression change in transgenic plants overexpressing miRNA396-resitanat PF-5274857 version of GRF1 orrGRF3 with those of the grf1/grf2/grf3 triple mutant. Functional classification of the putative targets revealed that GRF1/3 are involved in a wide range of developmental processes and defense responses. Also, we demonstrate that GRF1/3 control the expression of other miRNA targets and may contribute to the negative regulation of their targets through association with other transcription factors. Together, our data shed lights into possible molecular mechanisms by which GRF1 and GRF3 control various developmental events and coordinate their interactions with defense responses. In order to identify specific biological pathways in which the putative targets of GRF1 or GRF3 are involved we subjected the 1434 genes to a comprehensive analysis using NCBI/Biosystem database.