Stress-Induced Gene Expression in Plants


Book Description

Researchers from North America and Western Europe discuss the state of the art research on gene expression in plants as affected by various stresses such as water deficit, seed dessication, anoxia, salinity, temperature extremes, heavy metals, air pollutants, and infection by pathogens. They also look at the possibilities of exploiting genes that regulate ozone resistance and the ingenious molecular strategies that have been developed by plants for dealing with pathogen attack. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Plant Abiotic Stress


Book Description

Over the past decade, our understanding of plant adaptation to environmental stress has grown considerably. This book focuses on stress caused by the inanimate components of the environment associated with climatic, edaphic and physiographic factors that substantially limit plant growth and survival. Categorically these are abiotic stresses, which include drought, salinity, non-optimal temperatures and poor soil nutrition. Another stress, herbicides, is covered in this book to highlight how plants are impacted by abiotic stress originating from anthropogenic sources. The book also addresses the high degree to which plant responses to quite diverse forms of environmental stress are interconnected, describing the ways in which the plant utilizes and integrates many common signals and subsequent pathways to cope with less favorable conditions. The book is directed at researchers and professionals in plant physiology, cell biology and molecular biology, in both the academic and industrial sectors.




MicroRNAs in Plant Development and Stress Responses


Book Description

Precise regulation of gene expression in both time and space is vital to plant growth, development and adaptation to biotic and abiotic stress conditions. This is achieved by multiple mechanisms, with perhaps the most important control being exerted at the level of transcription. However, with the recent discovery of microRNAs another ubiquitous mode of gene regulation that occurs at the post-transcriptional level has been identified. MicroRNAs can silence gene expression by targeting complementary or partially complementary mRNAs for degradation or translational inhibition. Recent studies have revealed that microRNAs play fundamental roles in plant growth and development, as well as in adaptation to biotic and abiotic stresses. This book highlights the roles of individual miRNAs that control and regulate diverse aspects of plant processes.




Transcription Factors for Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants


Book Description

Transcription Factors for Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants highlights advances in the understanding of the regulatory network that impacts plant health and production, providing important insights for improving plant resistance. Plant production worldwide is suffering serious losses due to widespread abiotic stresses increasing as a result of global climate change. Frequently more than one abiotic stress can occur at once, for example extreme temperature and osmotic stress, which increases the complexity of these environmental stresses. Modern genetic engineering technologies are one of the promising tools for development of plants with efficient yields and resilience to abiotic stresses. Hence deciphering the molecular mechanisms and identifying the abiotic stress associated genes that control plant response to abiotic stresses is a vital requirement in developing plants with increased abiotic stress resilience. Addressing the various complexities of transcriptional regulation, this book includes chapters on cross talk and central regulation, regulatory networks, the role of DOF, WRKY and NAC transcription factors, zinc finger proteins, CRISPR/CAS9-based genome editing, C-Repeat (CRT) binding factors (CBFs)/Dehydration responsive element binding factors (DREBs) and factors impacting salt, cold and phosphorous stress levels, as well as transcriptional modulation of genes involved in nanomaterial-plant interactions. Transcription Factors for Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants provides a useful reference by unravelling the transcriptional regulatory networks in plants. Researchers and advanced students will find this book a valuable reference for understanding this vital area. Discusses abiotic stress tolerance and adaptive mechanisms based on the findings generated by unlocking the transcriptional regulatory network in plants Presents various kinds of regulatory gene networks identified for drought, salinity, cold and heat stress in plants Highlights urgent climate change issues in plants and their mitigation using modern biotechnological tools including genome editing.




Abiotic Stress in Plants


Book Description

World population is growing at an alarming rate and is anticipated to reach about six billion by the end of year 2050. On the other hand, agricultural productivity is not increasing at a required rate to keep up with the food demand. The reasons for this are water shortages, depleting soil fertility and mainly various abiotic stresses. The fast pace at which developments and novel findings that are recently taking place in the cutting edge areas of molecular biology and basic genetics, have reinforced and augmented the efficiency of science outputs in dealing with plant abiotic stresses. In depth understanding of the stresses and their effects on plants is of paramount importance to evolve effective strategies to counter them. This book is broadly dived into sections on the stresses, their mechanisms and tolerance, genetics and adaptation, and focuses on the mechanic aspects in addition to touching some adaptation features. The chief objective of the book hence is to deliver state of the art information for comprehending the nature of abiotic stress in plants. We attempted here to present a judicious mixture of outlooks in order to interest workers in all areas of plant sciences.




Changes in Eukaryotic Gene Expression in Response to Environmental Stress


Book Description

Changes in Eukaryotic Gene Expression in Response to Environmental Stress focuses on various aspects of eukaryotic cell's response to heat stress (shock) and other stress stimuli. This book is organized into two major sections, encompassing 17 chapters that reflect the emphasis on research utilizing Drosophila, a variety of animal systems, and plants. This book first provides a brief introduction to the organization, sequences, and induction of heat shock proteins and related genes. It then describes the control of transcription during heat shock from the standpoint of molecular biology and evolutionary variations of the mechanisms in organisms with diverse metabolic needs. It goes on to discuss the issue of coordinate and noncoordinate responses of heat shock genes. It presents a model for post-transcriptional regulation on certain aspects of coordinate and noncoordinate regulations. Chapters 6-12 discuss heat shock proteins and genes and the effects of stress on gene expression of sea urchin, avian, and mammalian cells. The second part of the book focuses on the physiological role of heat shock proteins and genes in plants and fungi. It includes a discussion on experimental problems encountered during studies of the mechanisms of inhibition of photosynthesis by unfavorable environmental conditions. The changes in transcription and translation of specific mRNAs in the developing embryo during heat shock at various temperatures are described. The concluding chapters deal with heat shock response in plants, particularly the response in soybeans and maize, covering both physiological and molecular analyses. Research scientists, clinicians, and agriculturists will greatly benefit from the information presented in this book.




Plant Stress Physiology, 2nd Edition


Book Description

Completely updated from the successful first edition, this book provides a timely update on the recent progress in our knowledge of all aspects of plant perception, signalling and adaptation to a variety of environmental stresses. It covers in detail areas such as drought, salinity, waterlogging, oxidative stress, pathogens, and extremes of temperature and pH. This second edition presents detailed and up-to-date research on plant responses to a wide range of stresses Includes new full-colour figures to help illustrate the principles outlined in the text Is written in a clear and accessible format, with descriptive abstracts for each chapter. Written by an international team of experts, this book provides researchers with a better understanding of the major physiological and molecular mechanisms facilitating plant tolerance to adverse environmental factors. This new edition of Plant Stress Physiology is an essential resource for researchers and students of ecology, plant biology, agriculture, agronomy and plant breeding.




Biological Data Mining And Its Applications In Healthcare


Book Description

Biologists are stepping up their efforts in understanding the biological processes that underlie disease pathways in the clinical contexts. This has resulted in a flood of biological and clinical data from genomic and protein sequences, DNA microarrays, protein interactions, biomedical images, to disease pathways and electronic health records. To exploit these data for discovering new knowledge that can be translated into clinical applications, there are fundamental data analysis difficulties that have to be overcome. Practical issues such as handling noisy and incomplete data, processing compute-intensive tasks, and integrating various data sources, are new challenges faced by biologists in the post-genome era. This book will cover the fundamentals of state-of-the-art data mining techniques which have been designed to handle such challenging data analysis problems, and demonstrate with real applications how biologists and clinical scientists can employ data mining to enable them to make meaningful observations and discoveries from a wide array of heterogeneous data from molecular biology to pharmaceutical and clinical domains.




Heat Stress Tolerance in Plants


Book Description

Demystifies the genetic, biochemical, physiological, and molecular mechanisms underlying heat stress tolerance in plants Heat stress—when high temperatures cause irreversible damage to plant function or development—severely impairs the growth and yield of agriculturally important crops. As the global population mounts and temperatures continue to rise, it is crucial to understand the biochemical, physiological, and molecular mechanisms of thermotolerance to develop ‘climate-smart’ crops. Heat Stress Tolerance in Plants provides a holistic, cross-disciplinary survey of the latest science in this important field. Presenting contributions from an international team of plant scientists and researchers, this text examines heat stress, its impact on crop plants, and various mechanisms to modulate tolerance levels. Topics include recent advances in molecular genetic approaches to increasing heat tolerance, the potential role of biochemical and molecular markers in screening germplasm for thermotolerance, and the use of next-generation sequencing to unravel the novel genes associated with defense and metabolite pathways. This insightful book: Places contemporary research on heat stress in plants within the context of global climate change and population growth Includes diverse analyses from physiological, biochemical, molecular, and genetic perspectives Explores various approaches to increasing heat tolerance in crops of high commercial value, such as cotton Discusses the applications of plant genomics in the development of thermotolerant ‘designer crops’ An important contribution to the field, Heat Stress Tolerance in Plants is an invaluable resource for scientists, academics, students, and researchers working in fields of pulse crop biochemistry, physiology, genetics, breeding, and biotechnology.




Regulation of Gene Expression in Plants


Book Description

This book presents some of the most recent, novel and fascinating examples of transcriptional and posttranscriptional control of gene expression in plants and, where appropriate, provides comparison to notable examples of animal gene regulation.