The central role of transcription factors in bridging biotic and abiotic stress responses for plants’ resilience

Plants are adversely affected by a wide range of abiotic and biotic stresses during their life cycle. In real ecological environments, multiple stresses often occur simultaneously and have huge effects on the yield and nutritional content of crops. Crosstalk is regarded to exist between these different stresses. To date, most research focuses on the interaction between plants and single stress, and much remains to be discussed on the response crosstalk of plants to more than one stress. Plants imposed with one stress have been shown to affect their responses to other stresses. Plants have evolved sophisticated stress response networks through long-term coexistence with these stresses. Transcription factors, as master regulators of stress-responsive genes, are crucial nodes of the networks and are posed as excellent candidates for crop improvement. Studies have shown that some transcription factors can modulate the tolerance of plants to different stresses. It can be speculated that transcription factors may act as a convergence of regulation networks in response to different stresses. Different transcription factors, such as NAC, MYB, WRKY, bHLH, and ERF/DREB, have been extensively studied, implying vital roles in abiotic and biotic stress responses. Moreover, phytohormone signaling pathways regulated by abscisic acid, salicylic acid, jasmonic acid, ethylene, and ROS play key roles in the crosstalk between biotic and abiotic stress signaling. This review summarizes progress on the crosstalk of plant responses to abiotic and biotic stresses and the molecular mechanism mediated by transcription factors to respond to abiotic and biotic stresses. Transcription factors participating in phytohormone regulation signaling pathways are also discussed.