Dear Colleagues,

Forest-tree comparative and evolutionary genomics have gained much attention in recent years. Since these approaches could address fundamental issues of forest biology, including identification of genes or gene families regulating biological processes, unveiling the molecular basis of population adaptive divergence in nature and description of both genetic and phenotypic variations produced through speciation, the industrial and conservational applications are among the ultimate major benefits that could be achieved in this area. To design conservational strategies for forest trees, population genomics could establish potentially useful tools through translating allelic effects on phenotypes and identifying patterns of adaptive variation at the ecosystem level. The most recent advances in molecular biology techniques, mainly next generation sequencing as well as CRISPR technologies, have made evolutionary and comparative genomic approaches much more informative and cost effective comparing traditional approaches for biological studies in forest trees.

This research topic will collect articles dealing with the understanding of genome evolution and convolution of gene regulation for growth, development, reproduction, and responses to abiotic and biotic stresses, epigenomics, interactome analysis, macro- and micro-evolutionary processes and species history, architecture of quantitative traits, applications in industrial sectors, genetic resource conservation and breeding. We invite scientists to contribute their omics research to this topic. Original research papers, perspectives, hypotheses, opinions, reviews, modelling approaches, and methods contributing to forest trees’ comparative and evolutionary genomics, including techniques, applications, trait development, dedicated databases, and computational software, are suitable. This research topic aims to highlight recent progress made in this regard, which includes, but is not limited to:

• Forest tree genomes;
• Evolutionary origins and diversification of genes or gene family in trees;
• Evolution and diversification of trees' traits;
• Molecular mechanisms involved in biotic and abiotic stress responses, or development;
• Trees' microbiomes and holobionts (interactions between microorganisms and their host, identification of gene transcripts, proteins, and metabolites expressed by tree-associated microbial communities enabled by meta-“omics” approaches);
• Molecular interactions (high-throughput experimental techniques and computational predictions);
• Epigenomics (phenotype variation in a changing environment);
• Integrating omics into phylogeography and phylogeny;
• Genotype-phenotype association;
• Conservation genomics;
• Mutagenesis and directed evolution.

Prof. Dr. Liming Yang
Dr. Saeid Kadkhodaei
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. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 2600 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.

• comparative genomics
• omics
• evolutionary genomics
• microbiome
• gene family diversification
• gene function
• bioinformatics