Functions of MYB Transcription Factors Response and Tolerance to Abiotic Stresses in Plants

For the abiotic stress in adversity stress is an unfavourable environmental factor that severely affects the plant growth and development, plants have adapted to these stresses through long term evolution to improve their ability to survive. As one of the largest families of transcription factors (TFs) in plants, the MYB transcription factors can play important roles in plants. For example, they can participate in the regulation of plant growth and development, hormone signal transduction, and response to adversity stress. The N-terminus of the MYB family of transcription factors contains a typical MYB structural domain, and they can be classified into different subgroups according to the number of R repeats in the MYB structural domain. Upon activation by external abiotic stress signals, MYB transcription factors can bind to cis-acting elements in the promoter regions of downstream target genes either alone or in interaction with other proteins, and participate in the regulation of downstream expression of stress-response-related genes, thereby regulating plant tolerance to abiotic stress. MYB transcription factors also respond to abiotic stresses by participating in plant hormone signalling pathways. For example, abscisic acid, jasmonic acid, brassinolide, salicylic acid and so on. In this review, the structure and classification of the plant MYB transcription factors family and its mode of action are reviewed, role of MYB transcription factors hormone metabolism in plants and the mechanisms of MYB transcription factors involved in responding to abiotic stresses such as drought, salt, low and high temperatures, nutrients and heavy metals in recent years, and an outlook is given on the key research directions in the future, which will provide excellent genetic resources and theoretical support for the future genetic improvement of crop stress tolerance and plant breeding.