Expression of Small GTPases Under Stress and Developmental Conditions in Plants

Functional studies on ROP GTPases have achieved considerable attention during the past decade. Besides regulating several key regulatory functions, such as polarity establishment, cell wall synthesis, vesicular trafficking, these have also been implicated in hormonal and stress signaling. ROPs are known to mediate biotic stress resistance through a well-defined mechanism involving production of reactive oxygen species in response to pathogen attack. Since all upstream and downstream components of ROP regulatory proteins are the members of distinct gene families, the role of transcriptional regulation cannot be dismissed. The individual ROP protein perhaps is regulated at the transcriptional level to perform specific signaling role in biological and developmental processes. The evaluation and correlation of gene expression pattern of individual members of ROP GTPases in various stress and developmental conditions would help to deduce their functional specificity and biological relevance.