Cis-Regulatory Elements in Plants: From Genome-Wide Discovery to Functional Insights

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Genetics, Genomics and Biotechnology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2026 | Viewed by 152

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
1. Frontiers Science Center for Molecular Design Breeding (MOE), State Key Laboratory of Maize Bio-Breeding, Key Laboratory of Genome Editing Research and Application, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Beijing, China
2. Department of Plant Genetics and Breeding, National Maize Improvement Center, College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 00193, China
Interests: cis-regulatory elements; plant genomics; genome editing; molecular design breeding
State Key Laboratory of Maize Bio-Breeding, National Maize Improvement Center, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China
Interests: plant genomics; epigenetics; molecular breeding

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Cis-regulatory elements, including enhancers, promoters, silencers, and insulators, play central roles in orchestrating plant gene expression in response to developmental cues and environmental stimuli. Advances in genomics, epigenomics, and genome editing have greatly accelerated the identification of these regulatory sequences, enabling a deeper understanding of how they shape plant growth and adaptation. Despite remarkable progress, many questions remain regarding the mechanisms underlying cis-element function and their contributions to phenotypic diversity and crop improvement.

This Special Issue, “Cis-Regulatory Elements in Plants: From Genome-Wide Discovery to Functional Insights”, aims to bring together original research and comprehensive reviews that advance our understanding of plant gene regulation through cis-regulatory elements. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): genome-wide identification of regulatory elements, chromatin accessibility and 3D genome organization, transcription factor binding dynamics, experimental and computational approaches for functional validation, and applications in molecular breeding and synthetic biology.

We warmly invite you to contribute your work to this Special Issue and help shape the future of plant regulatory biology.

Dr. Hainan Zhao
Dr. Jian Chen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • cis-regulatory elements
  • enhancers
  • promoters
  • chromatin accessibility
  • 3D genome
  • transcription factor binding
  • gene regulatory
  • CRE editing
  • computational prediction of CRE
  • comparative genomics of cis-elements
  • synthetic biology and regulatory design

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