Protein Kinases and Phosphatases in Stress Transduction: Role in Crop Improvement

Abstract Crop productivity is largely dependent on environmental stress factors such as water scarcity, salinity, extreme temperature, etc. Plant cell membranes perceive the environmental cues by membrane bound kinase molecules such as RLKs (receptor-like kinases) and HKs (histidine kinases) and transduce them to the target genes through signaling molecules like MAPK (mitogen activated protein kinase) cascade, CDPKs (calcium-dependent protein kinases), and CIPKs (CBL-interacting protein kinases) and elicit appropriate responses. Protein phosphorylation is one of the key mechanisms underlying this signal transduction pathway. Understanding the chemistry of protein kinases will help in development of crop varieties with improved traits and yield under stress conditions through transgenic or breeding approaches. The present topic describes the various protein kinases involved in plant signal transduction and also describes functional validation of a few signaling genes. Genomic technologies have become an integrated part of breeding programs recently and efforts in this direction are also discussed.