Role of AP2/EREBP Transcription Factor Family in Environmental Stress Tolerance

Plants being sessile in nature have to face several adverse environmental conditions throughout their life cycle. The adverse environmental conditions include both abiotic and biotic stresses. Plant responses to these stresses are complex and involve numerous physiological, molecular, and cellular adaptations. Their perception and response is highly spontaneous and involves the production of important metabolic proteins such as those involved in the synthesis of osmo-protectants, chaperons, antioxidants and regulatory proteins operating in the signal transduction pathways. It is now a common knowledge that stress response is a multi-gene program, with several metabolic pathways being involved in cumulative responses. The stress response is a highly dynamic process and depends upon the magnitude as well as the multitude of stresses. As a result, multiple stress signal perception and transduction pathways are involved, which may also cross talk at various levels. Therefore, plants possess an intricate defence mechanism, involving multiple gene regulatory pathways. Transcription factors play a critical role in such defence responses by coordinating the expression of genes that are involved in the defence pathway to overcome the stress load in plants. AP2 (APETALA2)/EREBP (Ethylene-Responsive Element-Binding Protein) family of transcription factor is one of the largest in plants and has important regulatory functions in environmental stress tolerance. Furthermore, AP2/EREBP family also regulates diverse processes of plant development and metabolism such as vegetative and reproductive development, cell proliferation, secondary metabolism and responses to different plant hormones. This review focuses on the recent advances in exploring the role of AP2/EREBP transcription factor family proteins in environmental stress responses in plants.