ASR5 is a stress marker located in the nucleus, cytoplasm, and cytosol. It is involved in ABA response, salt exclusion, and stress tolerance. It is highly expressed in the stem and is minimally expressed in the leaf sheath, panicle, and roots. It is induced by GA, ABA, drought, salinity, cold stress, and ethylene. ASR5 is is downregulated in NAC2 overexpressing plants, and up-regulated in OsNAC2 RNAi line (Shen et al. 2017).

Under Al stress, the ASR5 protein binds to promoter DNA sequences to mediate the Al-responsive expression of a large number of genes, many of which play important roles in Al detoxification and stress adaptation (Arenhart et al., 2014).