Role of Chromatin Assembly and Remodeling in Water Stress Responses in Plants

Abstract

Owing to the sessile lifestyle, plants are exposed to the ever-changing and harsh environmental conditions. To defend themselves and to cope up with multitude of biotic and abiotic aggressors that compromise their development and reproduction, plants have developed various survival strategies. These include a plethora of physiological responses as well as developmental and morphological adaptations. Defense response to environmental stresses largely depends on the plant’s capability of stress sensing and transcriptional reprogramming to minimize trade-off between growth and stress. Changes in chromatic organization, chromatin remodeling and action of chromatin modifying enzymes constitute an important phenomenon involved in establishing these transcriptional states. This helps plants to attain higher degree of flexibility and facilitate activation or repression of specific sets of genes in response to environmental stresses. The present chapter provides insights about the events and the mechanisms involved in chromatin reorganization that occurs in plants in response to water stress.