Continued discoveries of remarkable plant adaptations to extreme environments challenge our thinking about the limits of plant life. Plants thrive on glaciers, in Antarctic permafrost, and in scorching deserts. Some grow completely submerged in water while others succeed in arid environments. Plants inhabit the ocean twilight zone under crashing pressure and the 6500m elevation on Mount Everest where the atmospheric pressure drops to 44 kPa. Some plants adapted to sustain high UVB photon levels, others colonize ground zero zones with elevated ionizing particle levels of nuclear plant accident sites, atomic bomb test sites, or radioactive element-rich regions. Astoundingly, plants can even physiologically adapt to growing in environments outside of their evolutionary experience such as the spaceflight microgravity and nullification of any physical reference to the gravity vector.
Understanding the connection between plant adaptive strategies and their environment, particularly from the edges of the terrestrial plant life, will advance our astrobiology-related efforts in the search for plant biosignatures on exoplanets, moons, or other celestial bodies in the universe, as well as our space biology-related efforts concentrated on incorporating plants into human space exploration missions. Therefore, the goal of this Research Topic is to consolidate the existing knowledge, to present novel plant adaptive strategies to colonize hostile terrestrial habitats, and to present novel discoveries of plant responses to environments outside of plant evolutionary experience.
Guiding questions related to this effort include but are not limited to: What are plant strategies to survive in low atmospheric pressure exerted by thin planetary atmospheres? How can plants sustain the particulate ionizing radiation of astrophysical origin in deep space? Are there any molecular solutions to plant photosynthesis outside of the visible light spectrum? What are plant strategies to survive shortage of liquid water? How do plants sense and respond to transitions between gravitational environments?
Amassed information will revisit our understanding of the limits of plant life. It will contribute to developing hypotheses regarding the conditions required to sustain plant vegetation on exoplanets. It will also advance designing strategies for genetic manipulations to engineer plant genotypes better suited for human space exploration.
We invite submissions of original research, reviews, mini reviews, opinions, and hypotheses. We wish to assemble a collection of studies on genetic, morphological, physiological, and biochemical strategies of plants pushing the limits of plant life. Analysis of plants from environments of high solar irradiance, high ionizing radiation, and high-altitude mountainous regions are particularly encouraged as well as from polar regions, glaciers, and deserts. Discoveries from space analog environments on Earth or simulated deep space-like environments and terrestrial analog missions are equally welcome.
We recommend empirical research based on field observations, laboratory, or chamber experiments and elucidating mechanisms at molecular, cellular, or organism levels. We strongly encourage submissions of the omics data analysis across plant species from the same environment, and same species from different extreme environments. We are also highly interested in reviews summarizing the current knowledge in the context of developing concepts for transformative research relating to astrobiology and space biology.
Please note that purely descriptive studies will not be considered.
Continued discoveries of remarkable plant adaptations to extreme environments challenge our thinking about the limits of plant life. Plants thrive on glaciers, in Antarctic permafrost, and in scorching deserts. Some grow completely submerged in water while others succeed in arid environments. Plants inhabit the ocean twilight zone under crashing pressure and the 6500m elevation on Mount Everest where the atmospheric pressure drops to 44 kPa. Some plants adapted to sustain high UVB photon levels, others colonize ground zero zones with elevated ionizing particle levels of nuclear plant accident sites, atomic bomb test sites, or radioactive element-rich regions. Astoundingly, plants can even physiologically adapt to growing in environments outside of their evolutionary experience such as the spaceflight microgravity and nullification of any physical reference to the gravity vector.
Understanding the connection between plant adaptive strategies and their environment, particularly from the edges of the terrestrial plant life, will advance our astrobiology-related efforts in the search for plant biosignatures on exoplanets, moons, or other celestial bodies in the universe, as well as our space biology-related efforts concentrated on incorporating plants into human space exploration missions. Therefore, the goal of this Research Topic is to consolidate the existing knowledge, to present novel plant adaptive strategies to colonize hostile terrestrial habitats, and to present novel discoveries of plant responses to environments outside of plant evolutionary experience.
Guiding questions related to this effort include but are not limited to: What are plant strategies to survive in low atmospheric pressure exerted by thin planetary atmospheres? How can plants sustain the particulate ionizing radiation of astrophysical origin in deep space? Are there any molecular solutions to plant photosynthesis outside of the visible light spectrum? What are plant strategies to survive shortage of liquid water? How do plants sense and respond to transitions between gravitational environments?
Amassed information will revisit our understanding of the limits of plant life. It will contribute to developing hypotheses regarding the conditions required to sustain plant vegetation on exoplanets. It will also advance designing strategies for genetic manipulations to engineer plant genotypes better suited for human space exploration.
We invite submissions of original research, reviews, mini reviews, opinions, and hypotheses. We wish to assemble a collection of studies on genetic, morphological, physiological, and biochemical strategies of plants pushing the limits of plant life. Analysis of plants from environments of high solar irradiance, high ionizing radiation, and high-altitude mountainous regions are particularly encouraged as well as from polar regions, glaciers, and deserts. Discoveries from space analog environments on Earth or simulated deep space-like environments and terrestrial analog missions are equally welcome.
We recommend empirical research based on field observations, laboratory, or chamber experiments and elucidating mechanisms at molecular, cellular, or organism levels. We strongly encourage submissions of the omics data analysis across plant species from the same environment, and same species from different extreme environments. We are also highly interested in reviews summarizing the current knowledge in the context of developing concepts for transformative research relating to astrobiology and space biology.
Please note that purely descriptive studies will not be considered.
