Research Progress on Functional Analysis of Rice WRKY Genes

Rice is a model plant for genomic study of grass species. Functional identification and definition of rice genes becomes the object of its functional genomics research. WRKY gene superfamily, one of the transcription factor gene families, was recently suggested to play important roles in plant development and stress response. In rice, the results of analyses of expression pattern and ectopic overexpressor lines also support this viewpoint, and the evidences implicate rice WRKY proteins in transcriptional reprogramming during biotic or abiotic stresses, senescence, sugar metabolites, and morphological architecture. In this paper, we review the advance in study of rice WRKY gene family and also propose unified nomenclature for rice WRKY factors to eliminate confusion.