Abiotic stresses such as high temperature, low-temperature, drought, and salinity limit crop productivity worldwide. Understanding plant responses to these stresses is essential for rational engineering of crop plants. In Arabidopsis, the signal transduction pathways for abiotic stresses, light, several phytohormones and pathogenesis have been elucidated. A significant portion of plant genomes (most studies are Arabidopsis and rice genome) encodes for proteins involves in signaling such as receptor, sensors, kinases, phosphatases, transcription factors and transporters/channels.
Despite decades of physiological and molecular effort, knowledge pertaining to how plants sense and transduce low and high temperature, low-water availability (drought), water-submergence and salinity signals is still a major question before plant biologists. One major constraint hampering our understanding of these signal transduction processes in plants has been the lack or slow pace of application of molecular genomic and genetics knowledge in the form of gene function. In the post-genomic era, one of the major challenges is investigation and understanding of multiple genes and gene families regulating a particular physiological and developmental aspect of plant life cycle.
One of the important physiological processes is regulation of stress response, which leads to adaptation or adjustment in response to adverse stimuli. With the holistic understanding of the signaling pathways involving not only one gene family but multiple genes or gene families, plant biologists can lay a foundation for designing and generating future crops that can withstand the higher degree of environmental stresses (especially abiotic stresses, which are the major cause of crop loss throughout the world) without losing crop yield and productivity.
Section 1: Functional Genomics approaches in signal transduction
Chapter 1: Towards understanding abiotic stress signaling in plants: convergence of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics approaches
Praveen Soni, Kamlesh Kant Nutan, Neelam Soda, Ramsong C Nongpiur, Suchismita Roy, Sneh L Singla-Pareek and Ashwani Pareek
Chapter 2: Molecular approaches in deciphering abiotic stress signaling mechanisms in plants
Swati Singh, Nisha Khatri, Arpana Katiyar and Yashwanti Mudgil
Chapter 3: Investigation of plant abiotic stress tolerance by proteomics and phosphoproteomics
Maik Böhmer
Section 2: Components of Signal Transduction
Chapter 4: Role of cation/proton exchangers in abiotic stress signaling and stress tolerance in plants
Peter D. Bickerton and Jon K. Pittman
Chapter 5: Decrypting Calcium Signaling in Plants: The Kinase Way
Swatismita Dhar Ray
Chapter 6: CBL-mediated calcium signaling pathways in higher plants
Joo Hyuk Cho and Kyung-Nam Kim
Chapter 7: Redox regulated mechanisms: Implications for enhancing plant stress tolerance and crop yield
Ashish Kumar Srivastava, Penna Suprasanna
Chapter 8: Role of Mitogen activated Protein Kinase Cascade in Combating Abiotic Stress in Plants
Hussain Ara and Alok Krishna Sinha
Chapter 9: Small and large G proteins in biotic and abiotic stress response
Amita Pandey, Manisha Sharma, Girdhar K. Pandey
Chapter 10: ABA Receptors: Prospects for Enhancing Biotic and Abiotic Stress Tolerance of Crops
Monika Dalal and Viswanathan Chinnusamy
Chapter 11: Emerging Roles of Auxin in Abiotic Stress Responses
Eshan Sharma, Raghvendra Sharma, Pratikshya Borah, Mukesh Jain and Jitendra P. Khurana
Chapter 12: Biotic and Abiotic Stress Signaling Mediated by Salicylic Acid
Dhirendra Kumar, Danda Chapagai, Phillip Dean, Mackenzie Davenport
Chapter 13: Methylglyoxal, Triose phosphate isomerase and Glyoxalase pathway: Implications in abiotic stress and signaling in plants
Charanpreet Kaur, Shweta Sharma, Sneh Lata Singla-Pareek, Sudhir Kumar Sopory
Chapter 14: Plant immunophilins: A protein family with diverse functions beyond protein folding activity
Aigen Fu
Section 3: Gene expression regulation of stress signaling
Chapter 15: Role of Plant Mediator Complex in Stress Response
Subhasis Samanta, Jitendra Kumar Thakur
Chapter 16: Towards understanding the transcriptional control of abiotic stress tolerance mechanisms in food legumes
Rebecca Ford, Saleem Khan and Nitin Mantri
Chapter 17: Insights into the small RNA mediated networks in response to abiotic stress in plants
Sonia C. Balyan, Roseeta D. Mutum, Shivani Kansal, Santosh Kumar, Saloni Mathur and Saurabh Raghuvanshi
Chapter 18: The Role of Long Non-coding RNAs in abiotic stress tolerance in plants
Swati Megha, Urmila Basu, Muhammad H. Rahman and Nat N. V. Kav
Section 4: Diverse Stress Signaling Networks
Chapter 19: Molecular physiology of heat Stress Responses in Plants
Homa Hemmati, Dinesh Gupta and Chhandak Basu
Chapter 20: The Omics of cold stress responses in plants
Somya Sinha, Bharti Kukreja, Priyanka Arora, Manisha Sharma, Girdhar K. Pandey, Manu Agarwal, and Viswanathan Chinnusamy
Chapter 21: Drought stress responses and signal transduction in plants
Charu Lata, Mehanathan Muthamilarasan and Manoj Prasad
Chapter 22: Physiological and molecular mechanisms of flooding tolerance in plants
Lekshmy S, Shailendra Kumar Jha, Raj Kumar Sairam
Chapter 23: Salt Adaptation Mechanisms of Halophytes: Improvement of Salt Tolerance in Crop Plants
Rohit Joshi, Whitney Pilcher, Mangu Venkata Ramanarao, Renesh Bedre, Luis Sanchez and Niranjan Baisakh
Chapter 24: UV-B Photoreceptors, their role in photosignaling, physiological responses and abiotic stress in plants
Priyanka Choudhury, Sindhu Kandoth Veetil and Suneel Kateriya
Chapter 25: Analysis of signaling pathways during heavy metal toxicity: A functional genomic perspective
Gyana Ranjan Rout and Jogeswar Panigrahi
Chapter 26: Nitrogen and Stress
Annie P. Jangam and N. Raghuram
Chapter 27: Signaling pathways in eukaryotic stress, aging and senescence: Common and distinct pathways
Ritika Das, Amita Pandey, and Girdhar K. Pandey
Section 5: Manifestation of Stress tolerance
Chapter 28: Designing climate smart future crops employing signal transduction components
Brijesh Gupta, Amit K. Tripathi, Rohit Joshi, Ashwani Pareek, Sneh L. Singla-Pareek
Chapter 29: Abiotic Stress in Crops: Candidate Genes, Osmolytes, Polyamines and Biotechnological Intervention
Autar K. Mattoo, Rakesh K. Upadhyay, and Sairam Rudrabhatla
Chapter 30: Abiotic stress tolerance and sustainable agriculture: A functional genomic perspective
Sarvajeet Singh Gill, Naser A Anjum, Monika Mahajan, Ritu Gill, Narendra Tuteja
Dr. Girdhar Pandey is Associate Professor, Department of Plant Molecular Biology, University of Delhi South Campus, New Delhi.