Roles of NAC transcription factors in the regulation of biotic and abiotic stress responses in plants

Abstract

NAC transcription factors are one of the largest families of transcriptional regulators in plants, and members of the NAC gene family have been suggested to play important roles in the regulation of the transcriptional reprogramming associated with plant stress responses. A phylogenetic analysis of NAC genes, with a focus on rice and Arabidopsis, was performed. Herein, we present an overview of the regulation of the stress responsive NAC SNAC/(IX) group of genes that are implicated in the resistance to different stresses. SNAC factors have important roles for the control of biotic and abiotic stresses tolerance and that their overexpression can improve stress tolerance via biotechnological approaches. We also review the recent progress in elucidating the roles of NAC transcription factors in plant biotic and abiotic stresses. Modification of the expression pattern of transcription factor genes and/or changes in their activity contribute to the elaboration of various signaling pathways and regulatory networks. However, a single NAC gene often responds to several stress factors, and their protein products may participate in the regulation of several seemingly disparate processes as negative or positive regulators. Additionally, the NAC proteins function via auto-regulation or cross-regulation is extensively found among NAC genes. These observations assist in the understanding of the complex mechanisms of signaling and transcriptional reprogramming controlled by NAC proteins.

Decreasing Electron Flux through the Cytochrome and/or Alternative Respiratory Pathways Triggers Common and Distinct Cellular Responses Dependent on Growth Conditions

“…Although the changes in transcript abundance for all transcription factors will not be detailed individually, the NAC family of transcription factors represents a good example for strongly overlapping transcriptome responses of aox1a and rpoTmp to stress. In Arabidopsis, there are 117 genes annotated as encoding NAC transcription factors (Nuruzzaman et al, 2013); 23 and 25 of these were significantly upregulated in rpoTmp and aox1a mutants, respectively, with an overlap of 22 in common (Fig. 10A).…”

Transcription Factor ATAF1 in Arabidopsis Promotes Senescence by Direct Regulation of Key Chloroplast Maintenance and Senescence Transcriptional Cascades

“…Genes affected by senescence-associated NAC TFs have been reported for several members of the family, and in some cases direct target genes were identified, such as for ORE1 (Balazadeh et al, 2010a;Matallana-Ramirez et al, 2013;Rauf et al, 2013a), AtNAP (Zhang and Gan, 2012b), and JUB1 (Wu et al, 2012). Besides regulating senescence, NAC TFs play important roles in various other physiological processes, including the responses to abiotic and biotic stresses and in hormone signaling (Wu et al, 2012;De Clercq et al, 2013;Jensen et al, 2013;Rauf et al, 2013b;Xu et al, 2013; for review, see Nuruzzaman et al, 2013). Here, we demonstrate the senescence-associated role of another NAC TF, the ABA-and H 2 O 2 -induced factor ATAF1.…”

The nitrate inducible NAC transcription factor TaNAC2-5A controls nitrate response and increases wheat yield

“…More than 100 members of this family have been identified in both Arabidopsis and rice; phylogenetic analysis indicates that these can be divided into six major groups (Nakashima et al, 2012). A number of NACs have been found to play broad roles in the regulation of root and aerial development, leaf senescence, hormone responses, and tolerance to multiple biotic and abiotic stresses, including drought, salt, and low-temperature stresses (Nakashima et al, 2012;Nuruzzaman et al, 2013). In wheat, several NAC TFs have been characterized for their response to abiotic and biotic stresses; some of these have been shown to play roles in adaptation to stresses such as drought, salt, and low temperature (Xia et al, 2010;Xue et al, 2011;Mao et al, 2012Mao et al, , 2014Tang et al, 2012a;Chen et al, 2013;Feng et al, 2014).…”