Biology and Biotechnology of Environmental Stress Tolerance in Plants, Volume 3: Sustainable Approaches for

Enhan

Roychoudhury (Ed.)

© 202

ylor & Francis)

with CRC Press (Ta

nmental Stress Tole

ss, Inc

ca

cing Enviro

4 Apple A

demic Pre

rance. Aryadeep

. Co-published

CHAPTER 7

Towards Engineering Smart

Transcription Factors for Enhanced

Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants

SYED SARFRAZ HUSSAIN,¹ BUSHRA RASHEED,² ABDUL QAYYUM RAO,²

AHMAD ALI SHAHID,² and BUJUN SHI³

1Kauser Abdulla Malik School of Life Sciences (KAM-SLS),

Forman Christian College (A Chartered University), Ferozepur Road,

Lahore – 54600, Pakistan

2National Center of Excellence in Molecular Biology (NCEMB),

West Canal Bank Road, Thokar Niaz Baig, University of The Punjab,

Lahore, Pakistan

3School of Agriculture, Food, and Wine, University of Adelaide, SA – 5064,

Australia

*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Environmental stresses (both biotic and abiotic stresses) greatly affected plant

productivity. Drought and associated stresses pose a major hindrance to plant

growth and productivity around the globe because of the complex nature

involving multigene, which further complicates the genetic engineering of

crops. Ultimately, these genes either provide stress protection to plants or

perform important regulatory functions. Because drought stress tolerance in

plants is triggered by complex multicomponent signally pathways therefore,

a basic concept of gene regulatory networks along with physiological and

biochemical understanding is essential for plant engineering with high-stress