Pathway to the Molecular Origins of Drought Escape and Early Flowering Illuminated via the Phosphorylation of SnRK2-Substrate 1 in Arabidopsis

In 2017, the early flowering phenomenon was described and summarized as drought escape (DE), one of the strategies plants employ to enable full completion of the plant life cycle in response to forthcoming stress events (Shavrukov et al. 2017). Since that time, this review has been cited more than 250 times; however, the molecular mechanisms and genetic networks controlling the interaction with genes regulating time to flowering remain fragmented and unclear, indicating that this is a very complicated process. The outstanding questions that remain to be addressed include how drought can regulate flowering, which exact genes are involved and how they accelerate or delay flowering for DE, to achieve the optimal plant response to stress and global climate changes (Takeno 2016, Tun et al. 2021)...