Plant Adaptation to Environmental Abiotic Stressors

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Physiology and Metabolism".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (9 June 2024) | Viewed by 3663

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
State Key Laboratory for Crop Genetics & Germplasm Enhancement and Utilization, Cotton Germplasm Innovation and Application Engineering Center (the Ministry of Education), College of Agriculture, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China
Interests: drought and salt stress; molecular mechanism of abiotic stress; m6a modification
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail
Guest Editor
Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Agrobiology, Institute of Germplasm Resources and Biotechnology, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Nanjing 210014, China
Interests: plant genetics; plant physiology; abiotic stress; crop improvement

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As sessile organisms, plants are often subjected to various environmental stress factors. For example, salt stress affects plant growth and development, increases the intracellular osmotic pressure and can cause the accumulation of sodium to toxic levels. Droughts often cause plants to grow short, while strong winds cause plant stems to break, and floods cause plants to logging and wilt, and so on. These environmental factors always occur alternatively, in which the changes in plants’ growing environments largely affect the growth and development of plants and even reduce or destroy the yield of crops in agricultural production. Thus, in response to these stressors, plants must adapt to these environment factors via various mechanisms, including regulating ion homeostasis (mainly salt), activating the osmotic stress pathways (mainly salt and drought), mediating plant hormone signaling (all stressors), and regulating cytoskeleton dynamics and the cell wall composition (all stressors). Moreover, unraveling the mechanisms underlying these physiological and biochemical responses to environmental stressors could provide valuable strategies to improve agricultural crop yields. However, understanding how plants adapt to these adverse environmental abiotic stressors, by unveiling underling the molecular mechanism and mining novel components involved, are still relatively less understood. Therefore, to gain insights into the stress response mechanism of plants, it is meaningful to unravel the perception and transmission links of plants in response to stress stimulations.

This research collection aims to highlight the advances in our understanding of the knowledge of plant adaptation to environmental abiotic stressors, with a main focus on the physiological, cellular and biochemical effects, protein interaction, molecular regulation network as well as on the underlying genetic determination and molecular control (i.e., stress perception, signaling transduction, pathway activation, tolerance/resistance mechanisms). Meanwhile, studies about the mechanisms and functions of epigenetic modifications, gene editing techniques, and accumulation-enhanced adaptation to abiotic stress tolerance are also welcome.

Dr. Dayong Zhang
Dr. Zhaolong Xu
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. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2700 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.

Keywords

  • abiotic stresses
  • stress tolerance
  • adaptation
  • stress signaling
  • molecular mechanism
  • protein interaction
  • molecular regulation network

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (2 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

18 pages, 9550 KiB  
Article
Transcriptome Expression Profiling Reveals the Molecular Response to Salt Stress in Gossypium anomalum Seedlings
by Huan Yu, Qi Guo, Wei Ji, Heyang Wang, Jingqi Tao, Peng Xu, Xianglong Chen, Wuzhimu Ali, Xuan Wu, Xinlian Shen, Yinfeng Xie and Zhenzhen Xu
Plants 2024, 13(2), 312; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13020312 - 20 Jan 2024
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1665
Abstract
Some wild cotton species are remarkably tolerant to salt stress, and hence represent valuable resources for improving salt tolerance of the domesticated allotetraploid species Gossypium hirsutum L. Here, we first detected salt-induced stress changes in physiological and biochemical indexes of G. anomalum, [...] Read more.
Some wild cotton species are remarkably tolerant to salt stress, and hence represent valuable resources for improving salt tolerance of the domesticated allotetraploid species Gossypium hirsutum L. Here, we first detected salt-induced stress changes in physiological and biochemical indexes of G. anomalum, a wild African diploid cotton species. Under 350 mmol/L NaCl treatment, the photosynthetic parameters declined significantly, whereas hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and malondialdehyde (MDA) contents increased. Catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and peroxidase (POD) activity and proline (PRO) content also significantly increased, reaching peak values at different stages of salt stress. We used RNA-Seq to characterize 15,476 differentially expressed genes in G. anomalum roots after 6, 12, 24, 72, and 144 h of salt stress. Gene Ontology enrichment analysis revealed these genes to be related to sequence-specific DNA and iron ion binding and oxidoreductase, peroxidase, antioxidant, and transferase activity; meanwhile, the top enriched pathways from the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes database were plant hormone signal transduction, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, fatty acid degradation, carotenoid biosynthesis, zeatin biosynthesis, starch and sucrose metabolism, and MAPK signaling. A total of 1231 transcription factors were found to be expressed in response to salt stress, representing ERF, MYB, WRKY, NAC, C2H2, bZIP, and HD-ZIP families. Nine candidate genes were validated by quantitative real-time PCR and their expression patterns were found to be consistent with the RNA-Seq data. These data promise to significantly advance our understanding of the molecular response to salt stress in Gossypium spp., with potential value for breeding applications. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Plant Adaptation to Environmental Abiotic Stressors)
Show Figures

Figure 1

15 pages, 4383 KiB  
Article
GhAGL16 (AGAMOUS-LIKE16) Negatively Regulates Tolerance to Water Deficit in Transgenic Arabidopsis and Cotton
by Jianfeng Lei, Yangzi You, Peihong Dai, Li Yu, Yue Li, Chao Liu and Xiaodong Liu
Plants 2024, 13(2), 282; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13020282 - 18 Jan 2024
Viewed by 1288
Abstract
Cotton is one of the most economically important crops in the world, and drought is a key abiotic factor that can significantly reduce cotton yield. MADS-box transcription factors play essential roles in various aspects of plant growth and development as well as responses [...] Read more.
Cotton is one of the most economically important crops in the world, and drought is a key abiotic factor that can significantly reduce cotton yield. MADS-box transcription factors play essential roles in various aspects of plant growth and development as well as responses to biotic and abiotic stress. However, the use of MADS-box transcription factors to regulate water stress responses has not been fully explored in cotton. Here, we showed that GhAGL16 acts as a negative regulator of water deficit in cotton, at least in part by regulating ABA signaling. GhAGL16-overexpressing (GhAGL16-OE) transgenic Arabidopsis had lower survival rates and relative water contents (RWCs) under water stress. Isolated leaves of GhAGL16-OE Arabidopsis had increased water loss rates, likely attributable to their increased stomatal density. GhAGL16-OE Arabidopsis also showed reduced primary root lengths in response to mannitol treatment and decreased sensitivity of seed germination to ABA treatment. By contrast, silencing GhAGL16 in cotton enhanced tolerance to water deficit by increasing proline (Pro) content, increasing superoxide dismutase (SOD) and peroxidase (POD) activities, and reducing malondialdehyde (MDA) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) contents under water stress. Subcellular localization and transcriptional activation assays confirmed that GhAGL16 is a nuclear protein that lacks transcriptional self-activation activity. The expression of ABA biosynthesis-related genes (GhNCED3/7/14), a catabolism-related gene (GhCYP707A), and a gene related to the ABA signaling pathway (GhABF4) was altered in GhAGL16-silenced plants. Taken together, our data demonstrate that GhAGL16 plays an important role in cotton resistance to water stress. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Plant Adaptation to Environmental Abiotic Stressors)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop