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Chinese Agricultural Science Bulletin ›› 2026, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (2): 57-64.doi: 10.11924/j.issn.1000-6850.casb2025-0681

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Research Progress on Role of Glycine-rich Proteins in Plant Response to Abiotic Stress

HUANG Jinli1(), HUO Jiaohan1, QIU Rongwei2, LIN Fang2, LU Caiyun2, XU Weifeng1(), LIU Jianping1()   

  1. 1 College of Resources and Environment, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou 350002
    2 College of Life Sciences, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou 350002
  • Received:2025-08-12 Revised:2025-10-11 Online:2026-01-25 Published:2026-01-22

Abstract:

Glycine-rich proteins (GRPs) are a family of proteins containing a high proportion of Glycine (20%-70%), which are widely present in prokaryotes and eukaryotes and are important regulatory factors for plants to respond to abiotic stresses (high salt, drought, high and low temperatures, etc.). They regulates plant growth, development and stress resistance response through RNA binding, protein interaction and other means. This article reviews the structural characteristics, classification system, biological functions and the mechanism of action under abiotic stress of plant GRPs. The results show that, structurally, all contain GR domains, and different subcategories also contain specific domains such as RNA recognition motif (RRM), cold shock domain (CSD), and CCHC zinc finger. It can be classified into five categories. Among them, category IV (GR-RBPs) contains RNA binding functions and is the most abundant in plants. Functionally, GRPs have obvious tissue specificity and can participate in plant growth and development by promoting cell elongation and regulating stomatal opening and closing. The role of GRPs in the response to abiotic stress is emphasized: under low-temperature stress, AtGRP2 of Arabidopsis thaliana, a GRPs of the Ⅳc subfamily, enhances the plant's frost resistance through RNA chaperone activity. Under high-temperature stress, the expression of OsGRP3/OsGRP162 in rice and BcGRP1 in non-head-forming Chinese cabbage is induced by heat, maintaining the heat tolerance of plants. In salt stress and osmotic stress, the Limonium bicolor LbGRP1 enhances salt tolerance by increasing the activity of antioxidant enzymes. Under drought stress, Arabidopsis AtGRP2/AtGRP7 and rice OsGRP3 enhance drought resistance by regulating stomatal movement, ROS metabolism and lignin synthesis. Finally, the future research directions are discussed, and it is proposed that multi-mics and genetic techniques should be combined to analyze the upstream regulatory network of GRPs and the collaborative response mechanism under multiple stresses, providing a theoretical basis for breeding stress-resistant crop varieties.

Key words: plant, glycine-rich proteins, abiotic stress, growth and development, stress resistance