Signal Perception and Transduction in Plants

Abstract

Plants are sessile organisms and are not able to move away from adverse environmental conditions and must
response to an array of environmental and developmental cues. They heavily rely on high sensitivity detection and
adaptation mechanisms to environmental perturbations. Signal transduction, the means whereby cells construct
response to a signal, is a recently defined focus of research in plant biology. Over the past decade our understanding of
plant signaling pathways has increased greatly, in part due to the use of molecular genetics and biochemical tools in
model plants for example Arabidopsis thaliana and Medicago truncatula. This has assisted us in the identification of
components of many signal transduction pathways in diverse physiological systems for example hormonal,
developmental and environmental signal transduction pathways and cross-talk between them.During the last 15 years
the number of known plant hormones has grown from five to at least ten. Furthermore, many of the proteins involved in
plant hormone signaling pathways have been identified, including receptors for many of the major hormones. In
addition, recent studies confirm that hormone signaling is integrated at several levels during plant growth and
development.
In this review paper we have covered recent work in signaling pathway in plants especially how plants
sense biotic and abiotic stresses and the potential mechanisms by which different chemical molecules and
their downstream signaling components modulates stress tolerance.