Chapter 12 - LEA proteins and drought stress in wheat

Abstract

Drought is one of the most lethal stresses to food crop plants such as wheat. Only a few plants including wheat have an innate ability to cope with natural or artificial stress conditions, and drought is no exemption. This mainly is executed with the aid of stress-tolerant regions of plant genome, which contain some different genes (such as Rab, GST, LEA, and the like), encoding proteins, and carbohydrates, released in response to an unfavorable stress environment. Late Embryogenesis Abundant (LEA) proteins start to accumulate at a later stage of development and have a role in protection against salinity, cold shock, and desiccation stress. Desiccation-tolerant bacteria and invertebrates also contain certain LEA proteins. LEA proteins have seven groups classified based on amino acid sequence and POPP (protein or oligonucleotide probability profile) and are present in the mitochondrial matrix of plant cells. These proteins show different properties in dry and wet states. Under stress conditions, LEA proteins, which belong to a class of late-induced stress-responsive genes, are activated by the second messenger system and various other pathways to undergo an increase in size modification, thereby inducing a stress-tolerance state. The detailed mechanism of wheat LEA proteins during the drought conditions or stress is discussed at this moment, in this chapter comprehensively.