Author Description

This Research Topic is part of the Abiotic Stress Signaling in Plants: Functional Genomic Intervention series: Abiotic Stress Signaling in Plants: Functional Genomic Intervention Abiotic stresses such as high temperature, low-temperature, drought and salinity limit crop productivity worldwide. Understanding plant responses to these stresses is essential for rational engineering of crop plants. In Arabidopsis, the signal transduction pathways for abiotic stresses, light, several phytohormones and pathogenesis have been elucidated. A significant portion of plant genomes (most studies are Arabidopsis and rice genome) encodes for proteins involves in signaling such as receptor, sensors, kinases, phosphatases, transcription factors and transporters/channels. Despite decades of physiological and molecular effort, knowledge pertaining to how plants sense and transduce low and high temperature, low-water availability (drought), water-submergence and salinity signals is still a major question before plant biologist. One major constraint hampering our understanding of these signal transduction processes in plants has been the lack or slow pace of application of molecular genomic and genetics knowledge in the form of gene function.