Abiotic stress signal transduction in plants: Molecular and genetic perspectives

Low temperature, drought and salinity are major adverse environmental facto rs that Limit plant productivity. Understanding the mechanisms by which pla nts perceive and transduce these stress signals to initiate adaptive respon ses is essential for engineering stress-tolerant crop plants. Molecular and biochemical studies suggest that abiotic stress signaling in plants involv es receptor-coupled phosphorelay, phosphoinositol-induced Ca2+ changes, mit ogen-activated protein kinase cascades and transcriptional activation of st ress-responsive genes, In addition, protein posttranslational modifications and adapter or scaffold-mediated protein-protein interactions are also imp ortant in abiotic stress signal transduction. Most of these signaling modul es, however, have not been genetically established to function in plant abi otic stress signal transduction, To overcome the scarcity of abiotic stress -specific phenotypes for conventional genetic screens, molecular genetic an alysis using stress-responsive promoter-driven reporter is suggested as an alternative approach to genetically dissect abiotic stress signaling networ ks in plants.