•Alteration of stress (abiotic and biotic) constitutes one of the major problems for normal plants’ health. Biotic stress reduces about 30% of yield production whereas abiotic stress limits respectively So for sufficient food new techniques are developed with molecular proteins named helicase.•Helicase (DNA and RNA helicase) are conserved genes in eukaryotes, prokaryotes, and plants. All members of this gene family are involved in cellular metabolism. To overcome stress-inducing crop losses, a stress-tolerant trait is required for food security.•Both DNA and RNA helicase highly influences the plant's Defense mechanism which can be performed where toxic secondary metabolites are stored. Recent research found about plant DNA helicases have an important role to develop healthy high yielding plants under stressful environments.•The RNA helicases are highly found in the superfamily 2 (SF2) subclass that is characterized by sequence homology within the helicase domain.•The helicase core domain contains two RecA-like domains core and 12 sequence motifs such are Q, I, Ia, Ib, Ic, II, III, IV, IVa, V, Va, and VI. All the motives are involved in ATP- binding and breaking the hydrogen bonds.