Abiotic stress responsive cis-regulatory elements (CREs) in rice (Oryza sativa L.) and other plants
Capability of crop plants to adjust to the adverse environmental conditions in a spatiotemporalfashion is critical for their survival and maintaining agricultural productivity.Genetic engineering efforts for improving tolerance to diverse abiotic stresses in crop plantsusing well characterised stress-inducible promoter elements have proven to be advantageous.Combinatorial interactions of cis-acting DNA elements in the promoters with trans-actingprotein factors are key processes governing spatio-temporal gene expression. It is becomingincreasingly evident that targeted modification of molecular genetic network is feasible, forexploiting the potential of specific abiotic stress responsive element and its correspondingmaster regulatory genes via plant genetic engineering.The importance of inducible promotersin agricultural crop improvement is enormous; hence it is very crucial to characteriseinducible promoters from plant genome sequence data bases on a large scale. We will brieflydiscuss here abiotic stress responsive cis-acting elements and their role in abiotic stressregulated gene expression.