Transcriptional networks governing plant metabolism

Efficiently obtaining and utilizing energy and elements is critical for an organism to maximize its fitness. Optimizing these processes requires precise regulation and coordination of an organism’s metabolic networks in response to diverse environmental conditions and developmental stages. Metabolic regulation is often considered to largely occur by allosteric feedback where the metabolites directly influence the enzymes function. Recent work is showing that there is also an extensive role for transcriptional control of the enzyme encoding genes to construct the metabolic network in response to developmental and environmental stimuli. Within this review, we go through the extensive evidence of how transcription can coordinate the necessary metabolic shifts required to coordinate a plants metabolism with its development and environment. Additionally, we discuss evidence that the metabolites not only feed-back regulate the enzymes but also the upstream transcriptional processes, possibly to stabilize the system.