REVIEW article
Front. Genet.
Sec. Genomics of Plants and Plant-Associated Organisms
This article is part of the Research TopicDeciphering plant responses to environmental stressors: Integrative Omics and Biotechnological approachesView all articles
Responses and adaptations of plants to abiotic stress: Transcriptional regulation of secondary metabolic pathways, metabolomics, and nanobiological approaches From Stress Perception to Adaptation: Transcriptional Regulation of Secondary Metabolism, Metabolomics, and Nanobiological Approaches in Plants
Provisionally accepted
Yashdeep Srivastava1
Neha Saini1
Sandhya Tripathi2
Nishu Nishu1
Sapna Yadav1Akshay Kumar1
Neelam S Sangwan1*- 1Central University of Haryana, Haryana, India
- 2ICAR - Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur, India
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Plants are continuously exposed to diverse abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity, extreme temperatures, and heavy metal toxicity, each of which disrupts cellular homeostasis, ROS generation and impairs development. To survive under these adverse conditions, plants activate a complex network of transcriptional regulators that remodel primary and secondary metabolic pathways. These regulatory cascades, involving transcription factors such as AP2, WUSCHL, MYB, bHLH, WRKY, and NAC etc, orchestrate the biosynthesis of key secondary metabolites—including phenolics, flavonoids, terpenoids, and alkaloids—that function as antioxidants, osmo-protectants, and signaling molecules. Advances in metabolomics have provided deeper insights into stress-induced metabolic reconfigurations, enabling high-resolution profiling of pathway metabolic fluxes and revealing novel metabolites associated with adaptive resilience and tolerance. Alongside engineering abiotic stress resistance, nanobiological approaches have emerged as innovative strategies to modulate transcriptional responses and secondary metabolite production and offer remediation. This review comprehends current understanding of transcriptional regulation of secondary metabolism under abiotic stress, integrates metabolomics-driven discoveries, and highlights the potential of metabolites and /metabolomics-based tools to augment plant adaptive mechanisms. Together, these interconnected perspectives offers a comprehensive framework for developing stress-resilient crops in the era of climate change.
Keywords: abiotic stress, Crop resilience, nanobiology, omics, secondary metabolic pathways, stress signalling, transcription factor
Received: 07 Dec 2025; Accepted: 26 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Srivastava, Saini, Tripathi, Nishu, Yadav, Kumar and Sangwan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Neelam S Sangwan
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