Alternative splicing in plant stress responses: potential application for crop improvement

Alternative splicing (AS) which increases the diversity of the transcriptome frequently occurs in plants following stress treatment. Transcripts from AS offer potential for designing more resilient crops. Rapid advances in technology on full-length transcriptome sequencing (e.g. long-read single-molecule real-time), high-throughput RNA sequencing, direct RNA-sequencing platforms and high-throughput analysis have provided rapid characterization of transcriptomes with frequent encounters of alternative splicing (AS) in plants, particularly following biotic and abiotic (heat, low temperature, drought, lead and salt) stress treatments. Comprehensive plant databases of stress-responsive AS events, including those from Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and rice (Oryza sativa), indicate that intron retention is most prevalent. Given that plants are sessile, AS allows the plant to diversify its transcriptomic and proteomic landscape to enhance stress protection. Sometimes, the overexpression of a splice variant in transgenic plants will result in protection against the AS-triggered stress. Recent examples of stress-related AS in plants will be discussed together with the potential of splice variants in designing more resilient crops to thwart climate change, improve productivity and enhance food security.