Molecular Mechanism for the Regulation of ABA Homeostasis During Plant Development and Stress Responses

The plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA) play essential roles in numerous physiological processes such as seed dormancy, seed germination, seeding growth and responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. Such biological processes are tightly controlled by a complicated regulatory network including ABA homoeostasis, signal transduction as well as cross-talking among other signaling pathways. It is known that ABA homoeostasis modulated by its production, inactivation, and transport pathways is considered to be of great importance for plant development and stress responses. Most of the enzymes and transporters involved in ABA homoeostasis have been largely characterized and they all work synergistically to maintain ABA level in plants. Increasing evidence have suggested that transcriptional regulation of the genes involved in either ABA production or ABA inactivation plays vital roles in ABA homoeostasis. In addition to transcription factors, such progress is also regulated by microRNAs and newly characterized root to shoot mobile peptide-receptor like kinase (RLKs) mediated long-distance signal transduction. Thus, ABA contents are always kept in a dynamic balance. In this review, we survey recent research on ABA production, inactivation and transport pathways, and summarize some latest findings about the mechanisms that regulate ABA homoeostasis.