Advances in MYB Transcription Factors during Salt-Stress Regulation in Plants

Salt stress is a major environmental factor that affects plant growth, development and crop yields adversely. During plant response and adaptation to salt stress, many genes are activated, leading to accumulation of numerous proteins involved in resistance to salt stress. The expression of stress-induced genes is largely regulated by specific transcription factors(TFs). The MYB transcription factor family is large, functionally diverse and represent in all eukaryotes. MYB proteins function in a variety of plant-specific processes and they are proved to be key factors in regulatory networks controlling abiotic stresses including salt stress. Because of the structure diversity of MYB TFs, the regulation mechanisms of MYB are very complicated during salt stress regulation. In recent years, with an increase in research methods, the function mechanisms of MYB transcription factors, especially the R2R3-MYB members, have been studied deeply in plant salt stress regulation. Additionally, an increasing number of MYB-related proteins have also been demonstrated to be involved in the regulation of plant salt stress. In this review, we describe the structure of MYB proteins and summarize the research progress in different types of MYB TFs in plant salt stress regulation. We focus on the function and mechanism of this diversity transcription factor family so as to provide reference for further study and utilization.