Plant RNA Binding Proteins as Critical Modulators in Drought, High Salinity, Heat, and Cold Stress Responses: An Updated Overview

Abstract

Plant abiotic stress responses are tightly regulated by different players at multiple levels. At transcriptional or post-transcriptional levels, several RNA binding proteins (RBPs) regulate stress response genes through RNA metabolism. They are increasingly recognized as critical modulators of a myriad of biological processes, including stress responses. Plant RBPs are heterogeneous with one or more conservative RNA motifs that constitute canonical/novel RNA binding domains (RBDs), which can bind to target RNAs to determine their regulation as per the plant requirements at given environmental conditions. Given its biological significance and possible consideration as a potential tool in genetic manipulation programs to improve key agronomic traits amidst frequent episodes of climate anomalies, studies concerning the identification and functional characterization of RBP candidate genes are steadily mounting. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of canonical and novel RBPs and their functions in major abiotic stresses including drought, heat, salt, and cold stress conditions. To some extent, we also briefly describe the basic motif structure of RBPs that would be useful in forthcoming studies. Additionally, we also collected RBP genes that were modulated by stress, but that lacked functional characterization, providing an impetus to conduct further research.

Plants’ Physio-Biochemical and Phyto-Hormonal Responses to Alleviate the Adverse Effects of Drought Stress: A Comprehensive Review

“…The cspB gene, which encodes the cold shock protein B, was introduced into maize to give drought tolerance [129]. The cspB transgenic plant retains RNA stability and translation during drought stress, maintaining normal cellular function [152,153]. More profound knowledge of interactions between growth-promoting microbes and plants is another promising approach to the abiotic stress problem in many plants (PGPM) [132,154].…”

Identification of genomic regions of dry bean (Phaseolus vulgarisL.) associated with agronomic and physiological traits under drought stressed and well-watered conditions using genome-wide association study

“…The functional annotation revealed that the candidate gene for DFW, Phvul . 002G122100 on chromosome Pv02 encodes an RNA-recognition motif protein, which plays a comprehensive biological function (critical modulators) in abiotic stress (drought, heat flooding, cold and high salinity) responding processes in plants [106]. Zhou et al [107] observed that the RNA-recognition motif gene “OsCBP20” from rice confers abiotic stress tolerance in escherichia coli .…”

Ribonomics Approaches to Identify RBPome in Plants and Other Eukaryotes: Current Progress and Future Prospects

“…In plants, several studies have been conducted for the transcriptome-wide identification of coding RBPs by employing the RIC method [ 22 , 49 , 59 , 65 , 66 ], which identifies the RBPs linked to polyadenylated poly(A) RNAs. Several efficient RBPs identification methods have been developed which are available to isolate the genomewide RBPs in plants, including XRNAX [ 51 ], CARIC [ 13 ], and PTex ( Figure 4 ) [ 67 ].…”