Epigenetic and Gene Regulation Underlying Crosstalk in Plant Development and Stress Responses

Plants being sessile in nature possess a complex genome with evolved sense and signaling mechanisms for perceiving and responding to a variety of biotic and abiotic environmental stress factors. The unpredictable nature of variable stress factors including drought, thermal stress (heat, cold, and frost), salinity, and wind, along with phytopathogens has resulted in developing past event memory for priming their response with enhanced rapid reaction towards recurrent stresses.

The complexity of such plant-environment interactions cannot be defined by only genetic alterations, therefore epigenetic studies complemented with whole exome & genome sequencing will shed more light on understanding plant environment crosstalk. Moreover, the elucidation of epigenetic regulation underlying transcriptional priming followed by proteins ‘primed’ conformation influencing hormonal/metabolite signatures in horticultural and agricultural crop species will assist us in developing a mechanistic background. Moreover, research over the last decade has revealed mechanisms of this information storage and retrieval, which include epigenetic regulation, transcriptional priming, primed conformation of proteins, and specific hormonal or metabolic signatures.

This Research Topic aims to improve the understanding of the ecological constraints and relevance of plant interactions to stress factors following priming and memory. Additionally, we welcome original research and reviews addressing the underlying molecular mechanisms of the exciting and growing field of molecular plant-environment interactions. This Research Topic will focus on unraveling the epigenetic, transcriptomic, metabolomic, and proteomic insights underpinning the complex traits of plant-environment interactions. Authors working on such complex traits for explaining the mechanistic insights underlying various plant-environment interactions using multi-omics approaches in various plant species are invited to submit their work.

Keywords: Plant-Environment Interactions, Metabolomics, Epigenomics, Transcriptomics, Genomics

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