Editorial: Abiotic Stress Signaling in Plants: Functional Genomic Intervention

The major challenge before the plant scientists is to develop strategies to increase the productivity of crop plants so as to feed the rapidly increasing global population. The increased anthropogenic activities have resulted in radical decrease of fertile land available for agricultural practices, and in addition, the impact of climate change, which poses environmental stress resulting in drastic decrease in crop productivity are major concerns for plant biologists. The sessile nature of plants has naturally evolved sophisticated molecular mechanisms to sense and respond to stress conditions, which can result in stress tolerance or stress avoidance. Signal transduction networks form a larger proportion of this complex machinery, which enable the plants to sense the stress signals followed by transduction and finally generation of the response. A large number of signaling molecules have been identified and shown to be involved in perception and signal transduction pathways. Similar to animals, many of the signal transduction pathways are conserved in plants forming a plethora of proteins such Despite the high conservation in signaling pathways, plants have also evolved certain novel signaling mechanisms where several unique components have been identified that are not found in their animal counterpart. The complex interplay of single and multiple signal transduction networks allows plants to respond to these stimuli. In addition, these networks are responsible for normal growth and development, and communication with the environment under particular growth condition. At the same time, these complex-signaling circuitries also enable plants to develop memory, " intelligence " and behavior despite the lack of a definite nervous system (Baluška et al. In the last decade, genetic and biochemical approaches have facilitated the identification of numerous signaling pathway components in Arabidopsis. In addition, generation of a linear as well as compound signaling response has been shown in response to a particular stress stimulus. The compound response leads to crosstalk within major plant signaling pathways and is often associated with the plant's unique ability to combat multiple environmental stress conditions Identification and characterization of functional units involved in signaling cascades has further enabled plant biologists to understand the flow of information in response to a particular stimulus. These efforts are further enabled with the availability of whole genome sequences of many model as well as crop plants. Besides, a dramatic progress and use of high-throughput approaches have instigated a deeper understanding of cellular response machinery.