Harnessing the Potential of Plant Transcription Factors in Developing Climate-Smart Crops: Future Prospects, Challenges, and Opportunities

Abstract

Crop plants should be resilient to climatic factors in order to feed ever-increasing populations. Plants have developed stress-responsive mechanisms by changing their metabolic pathways and switching the stress-responsive genes. The discovery of plant transcriptional factors (TFs) as key regulators of different biotic and abiotic stresses have opened up new horizons for plant scientists. TFs perceive the signal and switch certain stress-responsive genes on and off by binding to different cis-regulatory elements. The above 50 species of plant TFs have been reported in nature. DREB, bZIP, MYB, NAC, Zinc-finger, HSF, Dof, WRKY, and NF-Y are important with respect to biotic and abiotic stresses whereas the role of many TFs is yet to explore. In this review, we summarize the role of different stress-responsive TFs with respect to biotic and abiotic stresses. Further, challenges and future opportunities linked with TFs for developing climate-resilient crops are also elaborated.

RNA-Seq-Based Transcriptomics Study to Investigate the Genes Governing Nitrogen Use Efficiency in Indian Wheat Cultivars

“…Transcription factors (TFs) are important key regulators that play a significant role in adaptation under environmental stresses ( Shahzad et al, 2020 ). In our study we found a number of transcription factor families up and downregulated under N stress.…”

Molecular mechanisms involved in fruit cracking: A review

“…They control all developmental aspects in living cells (Javed et al, 2020). TFs present an important role in plant tolerance/resistance to both biotic and abiotic stresses (Shahzad et al, 2021), by suppressing or activating genes at the transcriptional level (Javed et al, 2020). Some TFs are crucial in biotic and abiotic stresses simultaneously, and also a single TF has the capacity to answer to several stresses (Shahzad et al, 2021).…”

“…TFs present an important role in plant tolerance/resistance to both biotic and abiotic stresses (Shahzad et al, 2021), by suppressing or activating genes at the transcriptional level (Javed et al, 2020). Some TFs are crucial in biotic and abiotic stresses simultaneously, and also a single TF has the capacity to answer to several stresses (Shahzad et al, 2021). In plants, there are more than 50 TFs families, being WRKY, MYB, NAC (Javed et al, 2020;Shahzad et al, 2021), AP2/ERF (Javed et al, 2020), DREB, bZIP, Zinc-finger, HSF, Dof and NF-Y (Shahzad et al, 2021) the most important involved in biotic and abiotic stresses.…”

Balancing yield trade-off in legumes during multiple stress tolerance via strategic crosstalk by native NAC transcription factors

“…Being the central molecular switches of cell fates, developmental programs, and responses to various biotic and abiotic stresses, TFs have emerged as potential candidates for developing stress-resilient crops (Kaufmann et al 2010;Manna et al 2020). Genetic engineering of stress-associated TFs offers smart options to develop climate-smart food crops (Baillo et al 2019;Shahzad et al 2020). The discovery of more than 50 stress-responsive TF families in plants has opened up new opportunities for crop manipulation (Jin et al 2016).…”

“…Therefore, genetic engineering could serve as the faster solution to overcome the technical shortcomings of breeding in achieving durable crop plasticity for a wide range of stress. As a central player in stress-signaling, transcription factors (TFs) have emerged as powerful tools to engineer climate-smart food crops by manipulating the native stress regulatory network (Manna et al 2020;Shahzad et al 2020;Srivastava et al 2018). Transcription factors (TFs) are the most versatile stress regulators and act as molecular switches to control diverse cellular processes, such as stress signaling, cell division, phase transitions, and development, unlike transporters, enzymes, chaperones, etc.…”