Functional interplay of genes in prioritizing the responses of rice plants to fungal infection and abiotic stress

Abstract

Based on severity and life threatening status, rice plants prioritize their molecular response to abiotic stress and fungal infection through switching-on and -off the cross-talking genes. Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a crop which is cultivated in diverse soil and agro-climatic conditions across the world. Major limiting factor in rice production is the impact of various biotic and abiotic stresses. Under field conditions, as like any other plant species, rice crop would encounter more than one stress and acclimate to grow by regulating its molecular and cellular responses. Plants are known to switch their responses using convergent nodes of cross-talking signaling pathways during simultaneous multiple stresses. If plants encounter different stress one after the other, predisposing to susceptibility or tolerance is likely to occur due to the overlapping genes and their protein products in different biotic and abiotic stresses. Several studies on individual genes as well as genome-wide analysis of responses of rice to fungal and abiotic stress have indicated up-regulation of transcription factors, pathogenesis-related proteins, antioxidants and related proteins, hormone responsive proteins, ribosome-inactivating proteins, hybrid proline-rich proteins, lectins and heme activator proteins. Although differences in expression level of these cross-talking genes have been observed, molecular and cellular mechanism mediated by them to simultaneously alleviate fungal infection and abiotic stress is largely unknown. The objective of this review is to relate the function of genes and proteins under abiotic stress conditions from the point of view of fungal infection to further our understanding of cross-talk interface. Creating a fungal–abiotic stress response cross-talk blueprint of genes and proteins in rice is required to develop multiple stress tolerant varieties.