Effect of heat and drought stress on the expression of regulatory transcription factors and the genes involved in different metabolic pathways
Plants never encounter stress factors, whether biotic or abiotic in sequence. Mostly they have to face multiple environmental factors in suboptimal level (stressful) at the same time. As a result, the strategy of the plant to survive in such situations demands handling of multiple stresses at the same time by efficient management of the genetic repertoire that the plant has. The plant achieves this by altering expression of transcription factors that regulate the activity of different genes, whose products themselves play the structural and functional roles. In the present study, differentially regulated genes under heat and drought stress from different microarray studies were analyzed to assess the kind of metabolic pathways that are specifically altered (promoted or sacrificed) under heat and drought stress and the transcription factor families which have the governing role in such regulatory processes. It was observed that expression of genes related to metabolism, specifically in the cell organelles like plastids and mitochondria is differentially regulated. Some transcription factor families like AP2-EREBP, NAC, C2H2 and MYB play more important role in the two kinds of stress conditions.