Cellular and molecular mechanisms controlling autophagy: a perspective to improve plant stress resistance and crop productivity

Under stress conditions, crops cannot reach the maximal level of productivity. Moreover, stress very often leads to plant death. Various stress factors limit the development and success of agricultural praxis. Under stress conditions, plants generate multicomponent metabolic, physiological and genetic responses which help them to adapt to suboptimal environment. At the level of cells, recent research has demonstrated that part of cellular content can be ‘eaten’ by the cell upon stress, producing energy and metabolites for survival. This process is known as autophagy (J.H. Hurley et al., 2017). Apart from this, some cells can die in the course of so-called programmed cell death (PCD), to provide better conditions for survival of other cells under stress (W.G. van Doorn et al., 2011). Both these processes are highly conservative in the evolution of eukaryotic organisms; they are very important for plant stress response and survival in suboptimal environment. Both autophagy and PCD are being intensively studied in yeast and animals since 1960ies...