Abstract
The NAC (NAM, ATAF1/2, and CUC2) family of proteins is one of the largest plant-specific transcription factor (TF) families and its members play varied roles in plant growth, development, and stress responses. In recent years, NAC TFs have been demonstrated to participate in crop-pathogen interactions, as positive or negative regulators of the downstream defense-related genes. NAC TFs link signaling pathways between plant hormones, including salicylic acid (SA), jasmonic acid (JA), ethylene (ET), and abscisic acid (ABA), or other signals, such as reactive oxygen species (ROS), to regulate the resistance against pathogens. Remarkably, NAC TFs can also contribute to hypersensitive response and stomatal immunity or can be hijacked as virulence targets of pathogen effectors. Here, we review recent progress in understanding the structure, biological functions and signaling networks of NAC TFs in response to pathogens in several main food crops, such as rice, wheat, barley, and tomato, and explore the directions needed to further elucidate the function and mechanisms of these key signaling molecules.
Highlights
Crops are constantly challenged by a variety of abiotic and biotic factors that have negative impacts on their growth, development and yields [1]
We introduce the systematic classification and structural characteristics of NAC transcription factor (TF), focus on recent progress in defining their biological functions and signal regulation networks in disease response of several main food crops, and discuss future research directions needed to understand how NAC TFs promote the resistance against pathogens
These results are consistent with findings on StNAC43, another potato NAC TF, which can increase the deposition of resistance-related metabolites to reinforce the secondary cell wall and improve resistance to late blight disease [102]
Summary
Crops are constantly challenged by a variety of abiotic and biotic factors that have negative impacts on their growth, development and yields [1]. Plants have established high-efficiency gene expression networks to regulate multiple specific stress responsive genes in a coordinated manner Such regulation of the large-scale expression of genes requires a concerted function of different types of transcription factors (TFs). A large number of studies have proved that NAC TFs play roles in plant growth, development, abiotic stress response, and disease resistance [11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. We introduce the systematic classification and structural characteristics of NAC TFs, focus on recent progress in defining their biological functions and signal regulation networks in disease response of several main food crops (including rice, wheat, barley, tomato), and discuss future research directions needed to understand how NAC TFs promote the resistance against pathogens
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