Transcription Factors and Plant Abiotic Stress Responses

Abstract

Plants are exposed to different environmental stresses like drought, salinity, extreme temperatures, UV radiations, and heavy metals. Crop productivity is reduced significantly due to these stresses. As these abiotic stresses affect multiple stages of plant growth and development, so achieving tolerance to these stresses is also a complex process. Thus, basic mechanism of adaption and tolerance to abiotic stresses has been an area of comprehensive research to understand the mechanism of stress tolerance. The adverse environmental conditions are encountered by an integrated and complex cascade of molecular events in plants that depends upon the intensity and time period of the stress. Plant stress tolerance encompasses modifications at whole-plant, tissue, molecular, cellular, and physiological levels. In plants, the adjustments at biochemical and physiological levels, like generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), electrolytic leakage, relative water content, accumulation of free radicals, leaf wilting, leaf aging, and root growth stimulation, disturb the cellular homeostasis that results in inactivation of enzymes, lipid peroxidation, and membrane damage, thus influencing cell viability. Moreover, gene expression is an important molecular response controlled by various transcription factors which regulate the expression of stress-related genes. The gene expression is either negatively or positively controlled by transcription factors determining the plant survival. Therefore, it is necessary to study the transcription factors involved in regulating the gene expression so that the mechanism of stress tolerance may be understood. This chapter discusses various transcription factors regulating genes responsible for different abiotic stresses.