Post-transcriptional and post-translational regulations of drought and heat response in plants: a spider’s web of mechanisms

Abstract

Drought and heat tolerance are complex quantitative traits. Moreover, the adaptive significance of some stress-related traits is more related to plant survival than to agronomic performance. A web of regulatory mechanisms fine-tunes the expression of stress-related traits and integrates both environmental and developmental signals. Both post-transcriptional and post-translational modifications contribute substantially to this network with a pivotal regulatory function of the transcriptional changes related to cellular and plant stress response. Alternative splicing and RNA-mediated silencing control the amount of specific transcripts, while ubiquitin and SUMO modify activity, sub-cellular localization and half-life of proteins. Interactions across these modification mechanisms ensure temporally and spatially appropriate patterns of downstream-gene expression. For key molecular components of these regulatory mechanisms, natural genetic diversity exists among genotypes with different behavior in terms of stress tolerance, with effects upon the expression of adaptive morphological and/or physiological target traits.

Transcriptomic Changes of Drought-Tolerant and Sensitive Banana Cultivars Exposed to Drought Stress

“…Abscisic acid (ABA) in drought stress has been shown to play crucial roles in regulating the drought response, and its metabolic pathway involves multiple steps and genes, generally known as stress hormone (Savchenko et al, 2014; Guerra et al, 2015). ABA mediated stress signaling and downstream gene expression is carried out by ABA signaling complex comprised of ABA receptors [PYR/PYR-like, (PYL), RCAR], protein phosphatase 2C (PP2C), and sucrose non-fermenting 1-related protein kinase 2 (SnRK2).…”

The LSM1-7 Complex Differentially Regulates Arabidopsis Tolerance to Abiotic Stress Conditions by Promoting Selective mRNA Decapping

“…Transcriptome reprogramming in response to adverse environments has been generally considered as a complex process mainly based on the modulation of transcriptional activity of stressrelated genes (Yamaguchi-Shinozaki and Shinozaki, 2006;Gujjar et al, 2014;Nakashima et al, 2014). However, recent data indicate that posttranscriptional mechanisms also influential to make fine and timely adjustments of the plant transcriptomes to unfavorable environments (Guerra et al, 2015). The control of mRNA stability, in particular, is critical for the regulation of gene expression in response to abiotic stress.…”

An insight into drought stress and signal transduction of abscisic acid

“…Alternative splicing results in the availability of different transcripts which ultimately results in the formation of different proteins which might be helpful in drought stress tolerance (55). Moreover, alternative splicing can also auto-regulate the various TFs under stress Guerra et al (2015) (60). For example, alternative splicing of a transcript encoding DROGHT RESPONSIVE ANKYRIN 1 (DRA1) protein via intron retention mechanism is reported to involve in the drought tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana (60).…”

“…Moreover, alternative splicing can also auto-regulate the various TFs under stress Guerra et al (2015) (60). For example, alternative splicing of a transcript encoding DROGHT RESPONSIVE ANKYRIN 1 (DRA1) protein via intron retention mechanism is reported to involve in the drought tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana (60).…”