Common transcriptional regulation of ABA and ethylene

Abstract

Plant hormones are versatile chemical regulators of plant growth. The concept of hormone ‘interaction’ [1] has gained much importance and several key players of hormonal network are uncovered for major plant hormones. The fact that hormones are structurally unrelated and their interaction elicits different genomic and non-genomic responses suggest hormone interaction involve co-regulation at multiple levels [2]. Recent studies suggest that hormonal interaction involves control over biosynthesis genes [3-6], key components of signalling pathways [7,8], hormone distribution [9,10], and interaction at the level of gene expression [11-13]. The spatial and temporal changes in hormone sensitivity add further complexity as they are developmental stagedependent [14]. Understanding how these mechanisms are integrated would allow us to manipulate hormone interaction-regulated growth response under environmental changes. One such prominent emerging hormone interaction is ethylene and abscisic acid (ABA) in several growth processes. In this short review, I discuss some of the common transcriptional regulators of ethylene and ABA.