ABSTRACT
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Federal University of Viçosa, Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Emails: lgfi etto@ufv.br; murilobqi@gmail.com * Corresponding author
Plants are sessile organisms that are constantly subjected to various environmental challenges that trigger molecular defense responses for survival of these organisms against the threat (Knight and Knight 2001). Many of these environmental stresses have abiotic origins, such as high levels of salinity, drought, temperature and heavy metals in soil (Knight and Knight 2001). Plant responses to such environmental stresses are regulated by multiple signaling pathways (Knight and Knight 2001). Studies of the last decade have shown a large overlap of gene expression patterns in plants subjected to different stresses (Seki et al. 2001; Chen et al. 2002).
