Abiotic Stresses: Insight into Gene Regulation and Protein Expression in Photosynthetic Pathways of Plants

Abstract

Global warming and climate change intensified the occurrence and severity of abiotic stresses that seriously affect the growth and development of plants,especially, plant photosynthesis. The direct impact of abiotic stress on the activity of photosynthesis is disruption of all photosynthesis components such as photosystem I and II, electron transport, carbon fixation, ATP generating system and stomatal conductance. The photosynthetic system of plants reacts to the stress differently, according to the plant type, photosynthetic systems (C₃ or C₄), type of the stress, time and duration of the occurrence and several other factors. The plant responds to the stresses by a coordinate chloroplast and nuclear gene expression. Chloroplast, thylakoid membrane, and nucleus are the main targets of regulated proteins and metabolites associated with photosynthetic pathways. Rapid responses of plant cell metabolism and adaptation to photosynthetic machinery are key factors for survival of plants in a fluctuating environment. This review gives a comprehensive view of photosynthesis-related alterations at the gene and protein levels for plant adaptation or reaction in response to abiotic stress.

Keywords: abiotic stress; gene regulation; photosynthesis; protein expression.

Figure 1

Gene ontology (GO) analysis of the down-regulated differentially expressed genes of rice in response to cold treatment. This figure shows a colorful model of the PAGE analysis of gene expression data under the cold treatment after 72 h. The information includes the following: GO terms, (including 3 GO categories: biological process (P), molecular function (F) and cellular component (C)), number of annotated genes for each GO term, GO description, a simple colorful model in which the red color system indicates up-regulation and blue color indicates down-regulation, and different statistical parameters such as z-scores, means and adjusted P values (FDR) in the different rice genotypes.