Mechanism That Regulates Stress Responses in Plants Investigated

 

-Possibility of Producing Drought-Tolerant Crops

-Published in The Plant Cell

 

 

A research team headed by Yonsei Biotechnology Professor Woo Taek Kim has discovered a potential means of developing drought-tolerant agricultural crops by investigating ligases that are negative regulators of drought stress responses. The results of the research were published on December 12, 2016 in The Plant Cell with the title “The N-terminal UND Motif of the Arabidopsis U-box E3 Ligase PUB18 is Critical for the Negative Regulation of ABA-mediated Stomatal Movement and Determines its Ubiquitination Specificity for Exocyst Subunit Exo70B1.” The team’s research, combined with the use of genetic scissors, may enable the production of new varieties of non-GMO crops with enhanced environmental stress tolerance.