Multifaceted Roles of WRKY Transcription Factors in Abiotic Stress and Flavonoid Biosynthesis

Overview

Journal Front Plant Sci

Date 2024 Jan 3

PMID 38169626

Authors

Jinnan Zhang

Haiqing Zhao

Lu Chen

Jiacheng Lin

Zhile Wang

Jiaqi Pan

Fan Yang

Xiaoli Ni

Yiang Wang

Yuhua Wang

Rui Li

Erxu Pi

Shang Wang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Increasing biotic and abiotic stresses are seriously impeding the growth and yield of staple crops and threatening global food security. As one of the largest classes of regulators in vascular plants, WRKY transcription factors play critical roles governing flavonoid biosynthesis during stress responses. By binding major W-box -elements (TGACCA/T) in target promoters, WRKYs modulate diverse signaling pathways. In this review, we optimized existing WRKY phylogenetic trees by incorporating additional plant species with WRKY proteins implicated in stress tolerance and flavonoid regulation. Based on the improved frameworks and documented results, we aim to deduce unifying themes of distinct WRKY subfamilies governing specific stress responses and flavonoid metabolism. These analyses will generate experimentally testable hypotheses regarding the putative functions of uncharacterized WRKY homologs in tuning flavonoid accumulation to enhance stress resilience.

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