A highly conserved kinase is an essential component for stress tolerance in yeast and plant cells

Osmotic stress (drought, salt stress) is a major limiting factor for crop p roductivity in the world, Because cellular responses to osmotic stress are thought to be conserved in eukaryotes and because yeast is much more amenab le than plants to genetic research, a functional strategy has been performe d to identify limiting steps in osmotolerance of plants based on the comple mentation of yeast with a plant library. A new plant cDNA that encodes a fu nctional homologue of the yeast Dbf2 kinase enhances salt, drought, cold, a nd heat tolerance upon overexpression in yeast as well as in transgenic pla nt cells.