Plants pass the salt

Recently, overexpression of the plasma membrane Na+/H+ antiporter SOS1 was shown to increase salt tolerance of Arabidopsis and revealed that levels of SOS1 mRNA are post-transcriptionally regulated by salt stress. In addition to demonstrating a novel approach to engineer salt-tolerant crops, the results provide the first glimpse of a previously unknown mechanism used by plants to regulate gene expression in response to salt stress.