Perception of stress environment in plants

Abstract

Any unfavourable condition or constituent that upsets or blocks a plant's metabolism, growth, or development can be termed as stress. As plants lack the ability to escape from these adverse situations, they have evolved elaborate mechanisms to perceive and respond to them. Stress signaling has, therefore, taken a central role in growth and development of plants as they have to endure such situations more frequently during their life cycle. Perception of stress is a critical component of stress signaling which governs the ultimate fate of plant survival. Plasma membrane serves as the primary site for sensing various environmental stimuli through membrane receptors and transduces them via second messengers to downstream intra- and intercellular signaling networks. Further, phytohormones which are considered as plant growth regulators also play vital roles in stress adaptation. Plants have evolved intricate hormone signaling networks which can crosstalk with other stress mechanisms making them ideal candidates for mediating defence responses. Here, we have presented an overview of stress, its perception and transduction in plants, also highlighting important points of interactions between various stress signaling mechanisms. We propose that stress signaling is a highly complex phenomenon where much is still needed to be deciphered to unlock the secret of robust plant defence responses.