Role of Proteomics in Plant Stress Adaptation

Dear Colleagues,

The proteins encoded in a plant play significant roles in its survival and adaptation to external stresses. Since both abiotic and biotic stresses constrain plant growth and productivity, a comprehensive understanding of plant responses to stress is essential to elucidate the key factors affecting plant performance under adverse conditions. Plants have developed stress-specific adaptations as well as simultaneous responses to a combination of various abiotic stresses with pathogen infection. The efficiency of stress-induced adaptive responses is dependent on the activation of molecular signaling pathways and intracellular networks by modulating the abundance and/or post-translational modification (PTM) of proteins primarily associated with defense mechanisms.

Proteomic studies have significantly enhanced our understanding of stress response mechanisms in different plants. Recent advancements in quantitative proteomic techniques have improved the coverage of total proteomes and sub-proteomes and reduced the amounts of starting material, which is a major bottleneck for medicinal and transgenic plants. Moreover, these advancements have also facilitated the analysis of PTMs as well as protein–protein interactions at the cellular level, providing detailed information on the organ- and tissue-specific regulatory mechanisms responding to a variety of individual stresses or stress combinations during the plant life cycle. High-throughput proteomic techniques have been used to understand the stress-related physiological plasticity and adaptive mechanisms, such as photosynthetic efficiency, symbiotic nitrogen fixation, plant growth, tolerance, and collective responses to environmental stresses.

This Special Issue will focus on updates to the ongoing progress of proteomics with major crop species to discuss the current challenges and limitations inherent to proteomics techniques and data interpretation for non-model organisms. Future directions in proteomics research toward crop improvement are also important. We welcome submissions of original research papers and review articles addressing protein–protein interactions and post-translational modifications, providing more in-depth insight into protein molecular function to understand the plant molecular responses to various stresses.

Thank you very much!

Prof. Manu Kumar
Guest Editor

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• plants
• proteomics
• abiotic stress
• biotic stress
• stress adaptation