Abstract
Being sessile, plants rely on intricate signaling pathways to mount an efficient defense against external threats while maintaining the cost balance for growth. Transcription factors (TFs) form a repertoire of master regulators in controlling various processes of plant development and responses against external stimuli. There are about 58 families of TFs in plants and among them, six major TF families (AP2/ERF (APETALA2/ethylene responsive factor), bHLH (basic helix-loop-helix), MYB (myeloblastosis related), NAC (no apical meristem (NAM), Arabidopsis transcription activation factor (ATAF1/2), and cup-shaped cotyledon (CUC2)), WRKY, and bZIP (basic leucine zipper)) are found to be involved in biotic and abiotic stress responses. As master regulators of plant defense, the expression and activities of these TFs are subjected to various transcriptional and post-transcriptional controls, as well as post-translational modifications. Many excellent reviews have discussed the importance of these TFs families in mediating their downstream target signaling pathways in plant defense. In this review, we summarize the molecular regulatory mechanisms determining the expression and activities of these master regulators themselves, providing insights for studying their variation and regulation in crop wild relatives (CWR). With the advance of genome sequencing and the growing collection of re-sequencing data of CWR, now is the time to re-examine and discover CWR for the lost or alternative alleles of TFs. Such approach will facilitate molecular breeding and genetic improvement of domesticated crops, especially in stress tolerance and defense responses, with the aim to address the growing concern of climate change and its impact on agriculture crop production.
Highlights
Being limited and fixed to their immediate surroundings, plants rely on developing intricate sensing and signal transduction mechanisms in defense against various external biotic and abiotic threats
We review and highlight some of the added aspects related to the control of these representative transcriptional regulators at transcript and protein levels, with examples of specific members from selected transcription factor (TF) families involved in plant defense
Another study found that mutation of DNA demethylases in Arabidopsis enhances its susceptibility to the fungal pathogen, Fusarium oxysporum, and that DNA demethylases positively modulate the expression of stress responsive genes involving fungal infection [52]
Summary
Being limited and fixed to their immediate surroundings, plants rely on developing intricate sensing and signal transduction mechanisms in defense against various external biotic and abiotic threats. Some plants can recognize specific effector molecules that are produced by pathogens upon infection, triggering effector-triggered immunity (ETI) [4] Both PTI and ETI lead to activation of various signaling transduction pathways involving the mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase (MAPK), reactive oxygen species (ROS), salicylic acid (SA), jasmonic acid (JA), ethylene (ET), and other phytohormones and signaling molecules. These eventually result in the production of anti-microbial compounds and secondary metabolites, modification of cellular structure through callose deposition, and programmed cell death in response to the stress [5,6]. We discuss the potential of exploring such regulations of the regulators in major crops (e.g., wheat, rice, maize, and soybean) and their wild relatives, providing insights in improving disease resistance and stress tolerance of crops in the fight against climate change
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