Heat-Responsive Photosynthetic and Signaling Pathways in Plants: Insight from Proteomics

Heat stress is a major abiotic stress posing a serious threat to plants. Heat-responsive mechanisms in plants are complicated and fine-tuned. Heat signaling transduction and photosynthesis are highly sensitive. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the molecular mechanism in heat stressed-signaling transduction and photosynthesis is necessary to protect crop yield. Current high-throughput proteomics investigations provide more useful information for underlying heat-responsive signaling pathways and photosynthesis modulation in plants. Several signaling components, such as guanosine triphosphate (GTP)-binding protein, nucleoside diphosphate kinase, annexin, and brassinosteroid-insensitive I-kinase domain interacting protein 114, were proposed to be important in heat signaling transduction. Moreover, diverse protein patterns of photosynthetic proteins imply that the modulations of stomatal CO₂ exchange, photosystem II, Calvin cycle, ATP synthesis, and chlorophyll biosynthesis are crucial for plant heat tolerance.