Small chemical molecules regulating the phytohormone signalling alter the plant's physiological processes to improve stress adaptation, growth and productivity.

Small chemical molecules are attractive agents for improving the plant processes associated with plant growth and stress tolerance. Recent advances in chemical biology and structure-assisted drug discovery approaches have opened up new avenues in plant biology to discover new drug-like molecules to improve plant processes for sustained food production. Several compounds targeting phytohormone biosynthesis or signalling cascades were designed to alter plant physiological mechanisms.

Stress-Induced Detoxification Enzymes in Rice Have Broad Substrate Affinity.

Reactive carbonyl compounds (RCCs) such as hydroxynonenol, malondialdehyde, acrolein, crotonaldehyde, methylglyoxal, and glyoxal accumulate at higher levels under stress in plants and damage the cell metabolic activities. Plants have evolved several detoxifying enzymes such as aldo-keto reductases (AKRs), aldehyde/alcohol dehydrogenases (ALDH/ADH), and glyoxalases. We report the phylogenetic relationship of these proteins and in silico analysis of rice-detoxifying protein structures and their substrate affinity with cofactors using docking and molecular simulation studies.