Roles of brassinosteroids in plant growth and abiotic stress response

Abstract

Brassinosteroids (BRs) are widely used class of natural steroidal plant hormones. BRs take part in the regulation of growth and development of plants, maintaining BRs homeostasis, and allowing adaptation to environmental changes through the life cycle. They also play an important role in abiotic stress responses such as drought, salinity, high temperature, low temperature and heavy metal stresses. Through the signal transduction pathway, BRs interact with a variety of transcription factors via a series of phosphorylation cascades to regulate the expression of BR target genes. Thus, they regulate the various growth and development processes of plants. BRs crosstalk with different hormones to regulate plant physiology and development. This review primarily introduces the signaling pathways of BRs, their role in regulating plant growth and development, abiotic stresses, and their interaction with other plant hormones at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. Our review of this topic will provide a complete reference for the study and utilization of BRs in the future.