Stress signal transduction: Components, pathways and network integration

Abstract

Drought, high soil salinity, and low temperature are common adverse environmental conditions that limit crop productivity worldwide. Plants respond to these abiotic stresses partly by activating the expression of stress-responsive genes. The products of some of these genes can increase plant tolerance to the stresses. Understanding how stress-responsive genes are activated by abiotic stress will help us to breed or engineer stress tolerant crop plants. Genetic and other studies are revealing components that are involved in the signal transduction forabiotic stresses. The pathways that lead to the activation of stress-responsive genes and the network that integrates these pathways are being discovered in model plant systems. This chapter discusses some recent progresses in the elucidation of abiotic stress signaling mechanisms. © 2006 Springer. All Rights Reserved.