Isolation And Expression Of The ERF Transcription Factor Gene And Functional Genes Related To Stress Tolerance In Wheat (Triticum Aestivum L.)

Drought, salinity, cold and freeze are the key environment factors affecting plant growth and development, and seriously limit the increase of yield and improvement of quality of crops. Under abiotic stress, plants could sense and transduce the signals caused by stress to transcription factors through a series of phosphorization responses. The functional genes related to stress tolerance are then initiated; a series of physiochemical reactions are activated to alleviate the damage caused by abiotic stress, finally the stress tolerance of plants is enhanced.As were shown in numerous studies, transcription control is the most important adjustment ways of the genes expressed in plants during growth and development, response to stress, resistance to virus or fungus. Transcription factors are the important trans-acting factor involved in the control of transcription, among those, DREB (dehydration-responsive element binding factor) and ERF (ethylene-responsive element binding factor) involved in the responses of organism to biotic or abiotic stress, and functioned through binding with the corresponding cis-acting element in the promoter region of the functional genes. ERF transcription factor interact with ERF elements located in the promoter region of pathogenesis-related genes to initiate the expression of pathogenesis-related genes, then the pathogenesis-related proteins synthesis are activated to involve in the response of plant to virus attack. In the recent years, AP2/ERFBP transcription factors have been the focus in the studies to improve tolerance of plant to stress, especially on the utilization of DREB and ERF-like transcription factors in the improvement of crops to biotic or abiotic stress.The tolerance of plants to drought and salinity are complex traits with multiple genes and metabolism pathways involved. Although lots of genes related to drought and salinity tolerance have been characterized and some progress on the mechanism of plant tolerance to salinity have been understood, the molecular mechanism of plant tolerance to drought and salinity still are not clear, therefore further work on characterizing more genes related to drought and salinity tolerance should be conducted to enhance the understanding of the...