A number of proteins are produced by plants that experience water-stress.Water-stress takes place when the water available to a plant falls below acritical level. The plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA) appears to modulate theresponse of plant to water-stress. Proteins that are expressed during water-stress are called dehydrins [1, 2]. Dehydrins contribute to freezing stress tolerance in plants and it was suggested that this could be partly due to their protective effect on membranes [3].

Dehydrins share a number of structural features. One of the most notablefeatures is the presence, in their central region, of a continuous run offive to nine serines followed by a cluster of charged residues. Such a regionhas been found in all known dehydrins so far with the exception of peadehydrins. A second conserved feature is the presence of two copies of alysine-rich octapeptide; the first copy is located just after the clusterof charged residues that follows the poly-serine region and the second copyis found at the C-terminal extremity.

1. A cDNA-based comparison of dehydration-induced proteins (dehydrins) in barley and corn. Plant Mol. Biol. 13, 95-108
2. Pea dehydrins: identification, characterisation and expression. Plant Mol. Biol. 19, 1031-44
3. Overexpression of multiple dehydrin genes enhances tolerance to freezing stress in Arabidopsis. Plant Mol. Biol. 54, 743-53

A number of proteins are produced by plants that experience water-stress.Water-stress takes place
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