The Use of Highly Specific GSTs towards the Development of Stress Tolerant Transgenic Plants (pp. 263-274)

Abstract

Glutathione transferases (GSTs) belong to a super-family of multifunctional proteins. GSTs play a key role in cellular detoxification from xenobiotic substances like herbicides, secondary metabolites and toxic degradation products resulting from oxidative stress and cellular metabolism. Furthermore, environmental conditions generate oxidative stress, the products of which have to be detoxified by plants. It is anticipated that environmental stresses will worsen over the following years due to climate change. Hence, plants must adapt rapidly to the new environmental conditions in order to both survive and satisfy the constantly increasing human demand for agricultural products. Genetic engineering has been successfully used to develop plants resistant to stresses and, having taken all the necessary precautions, could offer a solution as it can help to develop plants with desirable traits in a short period of time. We present here the use of GST isoenzymes in the development of transgenic plants. Although transgenic plants over-expressing various GSTs have been used for “in planta” evaluation of the enzymes used in response to different stresses, the results show that GSTs could be of great value for generating stress tolerant plants. However, the literature is limited and more studies should be performed in order to exploit their full potential.