Role of WRKY transcription factors in plant defense against lepidopteran insect herbivores: an overview

Abstract

Plants, in nature are challenged by various environmental stresses (both biotic and abiotic), which distort the plant growth, development and crop yield. A wide range of insect herbivores attack plants across the globe, throughout the year, causing huge loss to the productivity of crop species. Being sessile, the plants respond to the crisis using a wide range of defense responsive elements which at the transcriptional level, includes the transcription factors, like WRKY, NAC, AP2/ERF, MYB, MYC, bZIP, bHLH and others. Increasing evidences suggest a pivotal role of WRKY TFs in the regulation of plant defense response against herbivory in Arabidopsis and other important crop plants. Unlike pathogenic attack, very limited information is available on the role of different WRKYs in herbivore-plant interaction. In this review, we will thus majorly focus on the role of WRKY transcription factors and its regulation in response to herbivore attack while summarizing the recent developments from the field of transcriptional, post-transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of WRKYs in response to herbivory attack with the prospects for future implementation in research.