Critical cis-Acting Elements and Interacting Transcription Factors: Key Players Associated with Abiotic Stress Responses in Plants

Plants are constantly confronted with various abiotic stresses, such as drought, extreme temperature, salinity, nutrient element deficiency and heavy metal contamination. In the long process of evolution, plants have developed a suite of sophisticated strategies to adapt to and to survive under the harsh environmental cues, among which transcriptional alteration constitutes an overriding mechanism. Stress-responsive genes can be classified into two major groups, functional genes and regulatory genes. Transcription factors play an essential role in the abiotic stress response by regulating the mRNA abundance of a large spectrum of downstream target genes via interaction with the cis-acting elements on the promoters of the genes. So far, several families of TFs and their interacting cis-acting elements, collectively called as regulons, have been well characterized to be key players closely implicated in abiotic stress responses. In the current overview, the major TFs and the cis-acting elements that have been extensively investigated in the last decades are introduced. In addition, future perspectives pertinent to their research directions are proposed, with the intention of gaining insight into better understanding and desirable application of the transcription factors.