Engineering Plants for Atmospheric Nitrogen Fixation: Beyond Legumes

The engineering of non-leguminous plants for atmospheric nitrogen fixation represents a transformative step toward sustainable agriculture, reducing reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. Achieving this ambitious goal requires a multifaceted approach at the interface of plant biophysics, computational modeling, and environmental stress physiology.

This topic aims to advance our understanding of the physical and quantitative principles underlying plant nitrogen fixation and the challenges posed by environmental contaminants. Core biophysical processes—including enzyme activity, cellular energy requirements, compartmentalization, and root-soil interface dynamics—are crucial determinants of successful nitrogen fixation but remain underexplored beyond the legume-rhizobia paradigm. By integrating state-of-the-art biophysical insights and predictive computational models, we seek to identify the key parameters and constraints that must be overcome to establish functional nitrogen-fixing systems in cereals and other non-legumes.

Moreover, agricultural soils are increasingly burdened with pollutants such as heavy metals, pesticides, and organic contaminants, each capable of disrupting the delicate biophysical and biochemical processes necessary for nitrogen fixation. Investigating and modeling the impacts of these contaminants—on enzyme kinetics, redox homeostasis, membrane transport, and (potentially) engineered microbe-plant interactions—is essential for designing robust, field-deployable solutions.

We invite original research, reviews, and perspectives that:

- Apply biophysical techniques or principles to elucidate the mechanisms of natural or engineered nitrogen fixation in plants,
- Develop or employ mathematical, computational, or systems biology models to predict or optimize nitrogen fixation performance (including under contaminant stress),
- Model the transport, uptake, and effect of environmental contaminants on nitrogen fixation pathways,
- Propose engineering strategies—grounded in quantitative modeling—that enhance contaminant tolerance or mitigate negative interactions.

This topic will foster a cross-disciplinary dialogue, leveraging insights from physics, computational biology, synthetic biology, and environmental science, to accelerate the design and deployment of contaminant-resilient, nitrogen-fixing crops.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review

Keywords: nitrogen fixation, biophysical modeling, synthetic biology, environmental contaminants, crop engineering

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.