Research Progress on Molecular Mechanism of Plant Salt Tolerance

Abstract

Salt stress is one of the important abiotic stresses affecting plant growth and development, and it seriously restricts agricultural production and economic development. The utilization of salinized farmland has been a worldwide problem. It is of great theoretical significance and application value to study the mechanism of plant salt tolerance and cultivate new varieties of salt-tolerant plants to make full use of salinized farmland. At present, a growing number of genes involved in salt stress response have been discovered and revealed. When plants exposed to high-salt environment conditions, many proteins in plant cells are involved in salt stress response. The receptor-like kinases and components of the cell wall respond to salt stress. The glycosyl inositol phosphorylceramide on the cell membrane acts as a Na+ receptor and binds to Na+, then it causes changes in cell surface to generate calcium signals to activate downstream regulatory pathways. The plasma membrane potassium channel proteins and Na+/H+ antiporter mediate Na+ influx and exclusion, and the tonoplast Na+/H+ antiporter compartments the excess Na+ in the cytoplasm into the vacuole. In addition, transcription factors also participate in the transcriptional regulation of plant adaptation to salt stress, and play important roles in the regulation of plant salt tolerance. In this study, the molecular mechanisms of salt-tolerant genes reported in recent years were reviewed based on their localization in plant cells, their functions in improving plant salt tolerance were summarized, and application potential of salt-tolerant genes were prospected, with an aim to provide references for plant salt-tolerance molecular breeding and scientific basis for salinized farmland improvement.

Keywords

• salt stress
• transcriptional regulation
• regulation of salt tolerance
• transgenic plant
• molecular breeding