Abscisic Acid: a versatile phytohormone in plant signaling and beyond.

As sessile organisms, plants cannot escape from adverse conditions and, therefore, they have developed complex responses to the changing environment. Plant responses to abiotic cues involve changes in metabolism, photosynthesis, gene expression, ion levels, etc., and must be perfectly coordinated by phytohormones. The abscisic acid (ABA) is the main phytohormone involved in abiotic stress responses although it is nowadays clear that its signaling pathways are not isolated but interconnected with other hormone signals in complex networks. This article revises molecular mechanisms involved in the crosstalks of ABA with other phytohormones in response to different physiological processes. Moreover, ABA is not a molecule exclusive from plants but it can be found in many other organisms including bacteria, algae, fungi, animals, etc. Interestingly, it can be synthesized and secreted by a variety of human cells. These aspects that confer to the ABA a range of ubiquitous molecule will be also revised in this article.

Biotechnological approaches to study plant responses to stress.

Multiple biotic and abiotic environmental stress factors affect negatively various aspects of plant growth, development, and crop productivity. Plants, as sessile organisms, have developed, in the course of their evolution, efficient strategies of response to avoid, tolerate, or adapt to different types of stress situations. The diverse stress factors that plants have to face often activate similar cell signaling pathways and cellular responses, such as the production of stress proteins, upregulation of the antioxidant machinery, and accumulation of compatible solutes. Over the last few decades advances in plant physiology, genetics, and molecular biology have greatly improved our understanding of plant responses to abiotic stress conditions. In this paper, recent progresses on systematic analyses of plant responses to stress including genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and transgenic-based approaches are summarized.