Transcription factors: modulating plant adaption in the scenario of changing climate

Abstract

Climate change and the associated environmental constraints have created a challenge to sustain food security and biodiversity globally. The response to adverse environments is a complex process and plants integrate several approaches that allow them to withstand climatic restraints, depending on the timing and length. Changes at the transcriptional level of various genes transduce cellular signals for the synthesis of necessary metabolites. Transcription factors have the principal role for the efficient adaptation capacity of the plants, and present an attractive target category for manipulation and gene regulation. As many biological processes in plants are regulated at the level of transcription, understanding transcription factor function is an important step towards understanding plant responses to environmental conditions. Among them, numerous transcription factors belonging to several large transcription factor families, such as AP2/ERF, bZIP, MYB, MYC, Cys2His2 zinc finger, WRKY, and NAC, have been shown as stress-responsive proteins. They act both by an abscisic acid-dependent and -independent manner, and through their interaction with respective cis-elements of their target genes, play crucial roles in recuperating plant stress tolerance. We highlight the considerable biotechnological progress made towards understanding the molecular stress responses of plants using important transcription factor families. The progress of their practical and application value in crop improvement through genetic engineering is also discussed.