Mechanisms of sensing abiotic stress responses in plants

Abstract

Plants encounter various environmental stresses, and they need unique strategies to adapt to such adverse conditions. This chapter represents the mechanisms of sensing abiotic stresses and responses in plants. This includes the stress signal reception, sensing, and transduction via different factors into intracellular signaling, further inducing stress-responsive genes and proteins. After receiving the stress on the cell surface and sensing it by primary messengers, intracellular Ca2+ ions are major messengers that increase during most stress-induced signal transduction pathways. The induced Ca2+ initiates different pathways for different abiotic stresses and downstream cellular processes, many of which are common to various stresses and result in stress-specific physiological and developmental responses. Significant progress has been made in understanding the early to downstream events in abiotic stress signaling in plants, which is reviewed and documented in this chapter.