Interplay of different signaling mechanisms in regulating programmed cell death during plant development and in response to stresses.

Programmed cell death (PCD) is a tightly controlled genetically regulated biological process, that controls morphogenic changes in any cell types during plant development or in response to environmental cues. Previously, significant progress has been made in identifying the key molecular players regulating the PCD process, how these components are integrated into context specific networks across developmental (dPCD) and environmentally induced PCD (ePCD) remains incompletely understood. This review summarizes the current understanding of PCD associated key molecular players, including calcium ions (Ca2+), reactive oxygen species (ROS), caspase-like proteases activity, transcriptional factors (TFs), and phytohormone signaling network and explicitly compares how their crosstalk orchestrate the initiation and execution of both dPCD and ePCD under biotic and abiotic stresses. A deeper mechanistic understanding of these interconnected signaling networks, and elucidating the crosstalk between development and stress induced PCD pathways might have significant implications in crop improvement as manipulating PCD processes can enhance crop disease resistance, optimize organ development and improve stress tolerance.