Chapter 8 - Protein Modification in Plants in Response to Abiotic Stress

Abstract

Plants are constantly exposed to various abiotic and biotic stresses that influence their overall growth, development, and productivity. Plant response to these environmental stresses mainly involves a complex cascade of processes related to various physiological, molecular, and cellular adaptations. Protein posttranslational modifications (PTMs) and synthesis of new stress response proteins play a key role in regulating plant response to various environmental stresses and mediating plant tolerance to fluctuating environmental conditions. PTMs (phosphorylation, acetylation, glycosylation, succinylation, ubiquitination, S-nitrosylation, and nitration) increase protein functionality and diversity, and regulate expression of genes, protein activity, interaction, localization, and stability, playing a key role in determining plant response to various biotic and abiotic stresses. Moreover, synthesis of various stress responsive proteins (dehydrins, osmotins, cold shock domain proteins, salt shock proteins, phytochelatins, metallothioneins, PR proteins, defensins) play an important role in regulating plant response to environmental conditions. The present chapter provides updated information on various abiotic and biotic stresses vis-à-vis the role of PTMs in relation to plants’ adaptation to these stress conditions. In addition to this, various stress responsive proteins involved in regulating the response of plants under various stress conditions have been described. Understanding the role of PTMs in regulating the stress responsive proteins will help in exploration of stress tolerance mechanisms in plants and development of stress tolerant crop plants for adequate agriculture production even under extreme environmental conditions.