Soil salt-alkalinization is a widespread environmental stress that limits crop growth and agricultural productivity. The influence of soil alkalization caused by Na(2)CO(3) on plants is more severe than that of soil salinization. Plants have evolved some unique mechanisms to cope with alkali stress; however, the plant alkaline-responsive signaling and molecular pathways are still unknown. In th...

Microbes are incessantly challenged by both biotic and abiotic stressors threatening their existence. Therefore, bacterial pathogens must possess mechanisms to successfully subvert host immune defenses as well as overcome the stress associated with host-cell encounters. To achieve this, bacterial pathogens typically experience a genetic re-programming whereby anti-host/stress factors become exp...

Salinity is considered a global threat to agriculture and causes significant reduction in crop yield. In particular, salinity stress promotes reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation ionic imbalance cells, leading oxidative even cell death. A large number of genes which are involved defense, hormone, carbohydrate metabolic pathways down-regulated under stress. Plants respond through series ph...

Cellular mechanisms of stress sensing and signaling represent the initial plant responses to adverse conditions. The development of high-throughput "Omics" techniques has initiated a new era of the study of plant molecular strategies for adapting to environmental changes. However, the elucidation of stress adaptation mechanisms in plants requires the accurate isolation and characterization of s...

The present work develops and analyses a model system of delay-differential equations which describes the core dynamics of the stress-responsive hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. This neuroendocrine ensemble exhibits prominent pulsatile secretory patterns governed by nonlinear and time-delayed feedforward and feedback signal interchanges. Formulation and subsequent bifurcation analysis of th...

The Orpheus flower Haberlea rhodopensis (Friv.) of the family Gesneriaceae can go into anabiosis for long periods in an almost entirely desiccated state. It is endemic relict from Balkan Peninsula. Alcohol extracts H. contain many biologically active substances with potent antioxidant, antigenotoxic, radioprotective, revitalizing and antiaging capabilities. However, regulating gene networks res...

Plant-specific NAC proteins are one of the largest families of transcription factors in plants, and members of this family have been characterized with roles in the regulation of diverse biological processes, including development and stress responses. In the present study, we identified 101 putative NAC domain-encoding genes (BdNACs) through systematic sequence analysis in Brachypodium distach...

Drought negatively impacts plant growth and the productivity of crops around the world. Understanding the molecular mechanisms in the drought response is important for improvement of drought tolerance using molecular techniques. In plants, abscisic acid (ABA) is accumulated under osmotic stress conditions caused by drought, and has a key role in stress responses and tolerance. Comprehensive mol...