Abstract
Increasing vulnerability of plants to a variety of stresses such as drought, salt and extreme temperatures poses a global threat to sustained growth and productivity of major crops. Of these stresses, drought represents a considerable threat to plant growth and development. In view of this, developing staple food cultivars with improved drought tolerance emerges as the most sustainable solution toward improving crop productivity in a scenario of climate change. In parallel, unraveling the genetic architecture and the targeted identification of molecular networks using modern “OMICS” analyses, that can underpin drought tolerance mechanisms, is urgently required. Importantly, integrated studies intending to elucidate complex mechanisms can bridge the gap existing in our current knowledge about drought stress tolerance in plants. It is now well established that drought tolerance is regulated by several genes, including transcription factors (TFs) that enable plants to withstand unfavorable conditions, and these remain potential genomic candidates for their wide application in crop breeding. These TFs represent the key molecular switches orchestrating the regulation of plant developmental processes in response to a variety of stresses. The current review aims to offer a deeper understanding of TFs engaged in regulating plant’s response under drought stress and to devise potential strategies to improve plant tolerance against drought.
Highlights
The 21st century agriculture is facing a daunting challenge of attaining nearly up to 70% increase in crop productivity by 2050 (Friedrich, 2015; Joshi et al, 2016a; Wang et al, 2016b)
These key genes mainly code for proteins that have either metabolic or regulatory roles, such as those involved in detoxification, osmolyte biosynthesis, proteolysis of cellular substrates, water channel, ion transporter, heat shock protein (HSP), and late embryogenesis abundant (LEA) protein (Joshi et al, 2016b)
In the past few decades, considerable research has been carried out toward identification and characterization of different transcription factors (TFs) that contribute toward drought stress response
Summary
The 21st century agriculture is facing a daunting challenge of attaining nearly up to 70% increase in crop productivity by 2050 (Friedrich, 2015; Joshi et al, 2016a; Wang et al, 2016b). Notable progress has been made toward this end by utilizing modern genetics and functional genomics approaches such as transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics and various drought stress responsive genes have been identified and characterized in crops These key genes mainly code for proteins that have either metabolic or regulatory roles, such as those involved in detoxification, osmolyte biosynthesis, proteolysis of cellular substrates, water channel, ion transporter, heat shock protein (HSP), and late embryogenesis abundant (LEA) protein (Joshi et al, 2016b). By analyzing plant genomes and employing modern OMICS tools, including genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics, significant progress has been made in elucidating the stress signaling pathways involved in drought stress response (Liu J.H. et al, 2014) Few of these genes associated with these transcriptional networks have been characterized in various molecular studies and have been found to be key contributors toward drought stress tolerance in transgenic plants (Todaka et al, 2015). In the past few decades, considerable research has been carried out toward identification and characterization of different TFs that contribute toward drought stress response
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