Regulation of plant stress response by dehydration responsive element binding (DREB) transcription factors

Plant growth and productivity are greatly affected by environmental stresses such as dehydration, high salinity, low temperature and biotic pathogen infection. Plant adaptation to these environmental stresses is controlled by cascades of molecular networks. The dehydration responsive element binding (DREB) transcription factors, which specifically interact with C-repeat/DRE (A/GCCGAC), play an important role in plant environmental stress tolerance by controlling the expression of many stress related genes. This review specifically focused on the structure characteristics of DREB proteins and their roles in regulating abiotic and biotic stress tolerance in plants. The DREB proteins are also involved in phytohormones signaling pathway such as abscisic acid, salicylic acid, jasmonate acid, ethylene and gibberellic acid. In addition, this review summarized the progress of the genetic engineering of DREB transcription factors in the main crops and model plants. Keywords: Abscisic acid, biotic stress, DREB transcription factor, environmental stress, signaling pathway, transgenic crop