Biological roles of NAC transcription factors in the regulation of biotic and abiotic stress responses in solanaceous crops

Abstract

This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract Evolutionary studies conducted on NAC (NAM, ATAF1&2, and CUC2) genes for all major groups of land plants, indicate the presence of the NAC subfamilies, even in the early land plants. The varied roles played by NAC proteins in plant growth and development range from the formation of shoot apical meristem, floral organ development, reproduction, lateral shoot development, and defense responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. Considering the value and importance of solanaceous crops, the study of NAC proteins in these plants needs to be intensified. This will help to identify and functionally characterize their promoters, which will subsequently aid in engineering plants with improved performance under stressful conditions. In this review, the functionally characterized NAC transcription factors specific to tomato, potato, tobacco, chili pepper and eggplant (aubergine) are summarized, clearly indicating their biological functions in the defense mechanism of the plants, against biotic and abiotic stresses.

Genome-wide identification and expression analysis of the NAC transcription factor family in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) during aluminum stress

“…Here, we provided the nomenclature of this gene family according to their chromosomal position (Table S1). As a very important vegetable and model crop for fleshy fruit development, functional genomics has become more and more popular, and studies on functional characterization of NAC genes in tomato have increased in recent years [34]. However, nomenclature on NAC genes is confusing in published studies.…”

Genomic basis of white pine blister rust quantitative disease resistance and its relationship with qualitative resistance

“…NAM genes PILA_08207 and PILA_30970 were identified in both the QTL mapping and the GWAS. NAM genes are involved in floral development and are overexpressed in the boundaries between plant organs (Aida and Tasaka, 2006; Cheng et al ., 2012), but have also been shown to be involved in biotic and abiotic stress responses (Tweneboah and Oh, 2017). This dual function may underlie previous findings indicating strong correlations between plant flowering time and disease resistance (Collins et al ., 1999).…”

Cultivar-Dependent Responses of Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) to Simultaneous Verticillium dahliae Infection and Drought

“…To study the combined effect of water stress and V. dahliae infection at gene transcriptional level, we have selected specific marker genes, after homology search in GenBank and Sol Genomics Network and designed suitable primers for quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). Pathogenesis related ( PR 1 and PR 5) and lipoxygenase ( LOX ) genes had been shown to be induced by Salicylic acid (SA) and Jasmonic acid (JA), respectively, and are commonly used as biotic stress markers in gene expression studies ( Aime et al, 2008 ; Kissoudis et al, 2017 ; Mahesh et al, 2017 ), AREB , and CBF 1 are water and cold stress related markers ( Hsieh et al, 2002 ; Wang et al, 2016 ), while NAC genes are reported to have roles in both abiotic and biotic stresses ( Tweneboah and Oh, 2017 ). Previous studies on the validation of eggplant reference genes for RT-qPCR assays, have indicated appropriate candidates for use in quantitative gene expression studies ( Gantasala et al, 2013 ; Zhou et al, 2014 ).…”