Multilevel Regulation of Abiotic Stress Responses in Plants.

David C Haak,Ruth Grene,Zhihua Hua,Rumen Ivanov,Takeshi Fukao,Song Li,Giorgio Perrella

doi:10.3389/fpls.2017.01564

Abstract

The sessile lifestyle of plants requires them to cope with stresses in situ. Plants overcome abiotic stresses by altering structure/morphology, and in some extreme conditions, by compressing the life cycle to survive the stresses in the form of seeds. Genetic and molecular studies have uncovered complex regulatory processes that coordinate stress adaptation and tolerance in plants, which are integrated at various levels. Investigating natural variation in stress responses has provided important insights into the evolutionary processes that shape the integrated regulation of adaptation and tolerance. This review primarily focuses on the current understanding of how transcriptional, post-transcriptional, post-translational, and epigenetic processes along with genetic variation orchestrate stress responses in plants. We also discuss the current and future development of computational tools to identify biologically meaningful factors from high dimensional, genome-scale data and construct the signaling networks consisting of these components.

Highlights

Plants must mount appropriate responses to ever-changing environmental conditions, by altering growth and development through specialized metabolism, modifications in morphology, or changes in life history
Anac096 abf2 abf4 triple knockout mutant plants exhibit reduced Abscisic acid (ABA) sensitivity and osmotic stress tolerance compared with anac096 single mutant and abf2 abf4 double mutant plants. These results suggest that NAC and AREB/ABF transcription factors (TF) can cooperatively regulate expression of genes associated with ABA response and drought tolerance
Consistent with these findings, several proteome-wide studies discovered that rather than some specific proteins being targeted for sumoylation upon abiotic stress treatments, a wide range of sumoylation substrates are induced in Arabidopsis seedlings after a short period of cold, heat, or oxidative stress exposure (Miura et al, 2007; Saracco et al, 2007; Golebiowski et al, 2009; Miller et al, 2013; Augustine et al, 2016)

Summary

Introduction

Plants must mount appropriate responses to ever-changing environmental conditions, by altering growth and development through specialized metabolism, modifications in morphology, or changes in life history. Functional characterization of key TFs that govern multiple signaling processes and directly regulate stress-responsive genes has contributed to dissecting intricate regulatory networks.

Results

Conclusion