Exploring Photosynthesis and Physiological Adaptations for Sustainable Growth

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue focuses on understanding the mechanisms of adaptation in higher plants. Primarily, investigate the responses of crops (wheat, rice, barley, etc.) and model plants (Arabidopsis, tobacco, rice, etc.) to biotic and abiotic stresses with the aid of the physiology, biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology, genetics, and epigenetic research fields. The integration of various research areas allows us to better decipher and comprehend the mechanisms of plants’ adaptation to climate changes. Given that photosynthesis and synthetic biology are two tightly related research topics, it is intriguing to explore their potential in generating climate-smart plants and ensuring agricultural sustainability. Combining these two research realms not only empowers plant adaptability to challenging environmental conditions but also permits enhanced plant photosynthesis efficiency and boosts crop productivity.

The problem that we seek to tackle is identifying specific genes associated with certain physiological and/or photosynthetic traits using sophisticated and advanced technologies such as genome-wide association studies (GWASs), next-generation sequencing (NGS), gene editing based on the CRISPR-CAS9 approach, synthetic biology, and pan-genomics for pinpointing promising traits that can boost crop productivity and maintain sustainability in growth and development. This method may easily help identify the crucial gene(s) that can control some physiological and/or photosynthetic traits in the plant. By editing and manipulating the genes in question, (knock-out, over-expression, or Near Isogenic Lines, NILs, creation) with some other molecular biology validation experiments such as q-RT-PCR and ELISA, transcriptomic and metabolomic profiling, etc., researchers can improve the plant yield through breeding programs using these well-understood and investigated genes and thus ameliorate the plant capacity (adaptation or acclimatization) to cope with severe surrounding conditions (biotic or abiotic).

The focus of this Special Issue also lies in investigating the molecular mechanism of trans-generational plant cell memory to external stimuli, including biotic and abiotic stresses. This signifies the epigenetic regulation of the stress memory by the plant cell (leaf, flower, etc.) during the next generations of culture, which may happen through DNA methylation and/or histone changes and other post-translational modifications (PTMs). Therefore, one of the possible yet unexplored ways to improve stress tolerance in crop plants may be to enhance the stress memory of plants through targeted modification of the epigenome. The findings of this Special Issue can lay solid foundations for the building of agriculture sustainability and drive investigation toward generating climate-smart crops thanks to the advances in modern breeding strategies and sophisticate technologies. This collection aims to gather fundamental and applied research with a focus mainly on investing in photosynthesis potential and plant physiology adaptations for endurable growth and development for the sake of ensuring food and feed security in face of recurrent, escalating, and exacerbating climate change conditions.

We welcome submissions including, but not limited to, the following:

• Photosynthesis and biophysics;
• Plant physiology and biochemistry;
• Plant molecular biology and genetics;
• Abiotic and biotic stress responses;
• Epigenetic regulatory mechanisms in plants;
• The roles of plant synthetic biology and omics in mitigating the deleterious effects of climate change;
• Agricultural sustainability and bioengineering;
• Sustainable agriculture toward improved crop productivity and resilience to climate change;
• Pangenome for developing plants resilient to abiotic stresses.

Dr. Jemâa Essemine
Dr. Sridharan Govindachary
Prof. Dr. Mingnan Qu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• photosynthesis
• plant stress physiology
• climate change
• agriculture sustainability
• climate-smart plants
• plant adaptation
• biotic and abiotic stresses
• plant breeding
• genetics
• omics
• pan-omics
• crop resilience
• synthetic biology
• epigenetic regulation
• growth and development