Plant Biosynthetic Engineering Through Transcription Regulation: An Insight into Molecular Mechanisms During Environmental Stress

Abstract

Transcription is not only essential for the synthesis of coding and non-coding RNA, but also extremely significant in regulating gene expression with the coordination of several protein complexes in development, differentiation, phenotype, metabolism, exposure to different challenging environmental conditions, and many other cellular pathways. Further extensions of these studies in plant biology will be very helpful in dealing and maintaining a balance between challenging environmental stress, plant resistance, plant productivity, and yield. Different plant secondary metabolites are induced by various developmental, hormonal, and environmental cues and facilitate the plant to fight and cope up with stress conditions. Interestingly, recent advances suggest that the biosynthesis pathway of secondary metabolites is tightly regulated at the transcriptional stages. Keeping in view studying both the molecular mechanisms at a single platform, the aim of this chapter is to understand plant secondary metabolite biosynthetic pathways at the transcriptional level under unfavorable or stressful environmental conditions.