Genetic Regulation of Plant Metabolism in Environmental Adaptation

Dear Colleagues,

The genetic underpinnings of plant metabolic plasticity in response to environmental stimuli represent a frontier in understanding adaptive evolution and resilience. Plants reconfigure their metabolic networks through finely tuned transcriptional, post-transcriptional, and epigenetic regulation, enabling survival under biotic and abiotic stresses. Advances in functional genomics, multi-omics integration, and genome-editing technologies have accelerated the discovery of key genes and regulatory circuits governing specialized metabolic pathways. However, challenges remain in systematically dissecting the hierarchical gene regulatory networks that translate environmental signals into metabolic phenotypes and deploying this knowledge for precision breeding.

Against the backdrop of climate change and ecosystem instability, elucidating the genetic basis of metabolic adaptation has become imperative for engineering next-generation crops. A major ongoing focus lies in resolving the trade-offs between stress-induced metabolic reprogramming and plant growth—a question central to both evolutionary genetics and crop improvement. Emerging tools in synthetic biology, single-cell omics, and systems genetics offer unprecedented opportunities to decode the spatiotemporal control of metabolic gene expression and its ecological consequences. This Special Issue aims to compile original research and reviews that illuminate the genetic and molecular mechanisms driving plant metabolic adaptation, with an emphasis on translational applications in sustainable agriculture and ecosystem restoration.

We invite contributions on topics including, but not limited to, the following:

• Gene regulatory mechanisms in environment-induced metabolic responses;
• Functional genetics of stress-responsive metabolites;
• Systems biology of metabolic pathway regulation;
• Metabolic trait engineering via genetic and genome-editing approaches;
• Metabolic adaptation in the context of ecological and evolutionary genetics.

Dr. Zenglin Zhang
Prof. Dr. Zhiyong Ni
Prof. Dr. Danmei Liu
Guest Editors

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