Abstract:

Drought, salinity and cold stresses are major adverse environmental factors which greatly limited the growth and development of plants, the late embryogenesis abundant proteins (LEA）are a kind of important cellular dehydration protectants and were assumed to play crucial roles during the periods of defending to drought and other abiotic stresses. The classification, construction and expression characteristics of LEA proteins were summarized and the functional researching progresses of LEA proteins for improving the drought, salinity and cold stress tolerance in plants were also reviewed.