Proteomic analysis of salinity stress-responsive proteins in plants

Abstract

Salinity is one of the most severe environmental factors that may impair crop productivity. Increased salinization of arable land is expected to have devastating global effects, resulting in 30% land loss within the next 25 years and up to 50% by the year 2050. Therefore, breeding for salinity stress tolerance in crop plants (for food supply) and in forest trees (a central component of the global ecosystem) should be given high research priority in plant biotechnology programs. Molecular control mechanisms for abiotic stress tolerance are based on the activation and regulation of specific stress related genes. Abiotic stresses usually cause protein dysfunction. Maintaining proteins in their functional conformations and preventing the aggregation of non-native proteins are particularly important for cell survival under stress. Cells subjected to salt stress showed a protective response which enabled them to survive. In the last few years, considerable progress has been made in the analysis of the transcriptome to study salt stress either alone or in combination with other abiotic stresses. However, there is no review that highlights the studies conducted to-date on proteomic analysis of salinity stress-responsive proteins in plants. The present review summarizes the effect of salinity in plants and the current initiatives in proteomic research for the analysis of plant salt tolerance. The importance of this review is to improve the salt tolerability of plants by understanding the alterations of proteins in plants. © 2010 Asian Network for Scientific Information.