Transcription Factors and Plants Response to Drought Stress: Current Understanding and Future Directions

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.

The effects of putrescine are partly overlapping with osmotic stress processes in wheat

“…Various drought stress responsive genes have been identified and characterized in crop plants (reviewed by [30]). Among these genes, for example those responsible for osmolyte biosynthesis, encoding water channels, ion transporters, heat shock proteins, and late embryogenesis abundant proteins are usually upregulated under drought conditions.…”

WRKY transcription factors in plant responses to stresses

“…Abiotic stresses including heat stress, or temperature inversion, soil salinity, oxidative stress, drought, and nutritional deficiency adversely affect the physiological and biochemical processes of plants (Joshi et al ). These stresses sometimes also co‐occur and negatively affect plant growth.…”

NAC transcription factor JUNGBRUNNEN1 enhances drought tolerance in tomato

“…The coordinated regulation of gene expression represents one such sophisticated response to drought stress. Water deficit triggers a wide-scale reprogramming of the transcriptome whereby transcription factors (TFs), and the gene regulatory networks (GRNs) they control, are of central importance (Chen et al, 2016;Joshi et al, 2016;Rabara et al, 2014;Todaka et al, 2015;Vermeirssen et al, 2014).…”