Proline Tagging for Stress Tolerance in Plants

Abstract

In environments with high levels of stress conditions, plants accumulate various metabolic products under stress conditions. Among these products, amino acids have a cardinal role in supporting and maintaining plant developmental processes. The increase in proline content and stress tolerance in plants has been found optimistic, suggesting the importance of proline in mitigating stress through osmotic adjustments. Exogenous application and pretreatment of plants with proline increase growth and development under various stressful conditions, but excessive proline has negative influence on growth. Proline has two biosynthetic routes: glutamate or the ornithine pathway, and whether plants synthesize proline by glutamate or ornithine precursors is still debatable as relatively little is known about it. Plants have the innate machinery to synthesize proline from both pathways, but the switch of a particular pathway under which it can be activated and deactivated depends upon various factors. Therefore, in this review, we elucidate the importance of proline in stress mitigation; the optimal amount of proline required for maximum benefit; levels at which it inhibits the growth, conditions, and factors that regulate proline biosynthesis; and lastly, how we can benefit from all these answers to obtain better stress tolerance in plants.