Advances on Plant Cell Responses to Environmental Pollutants

Dear Colleagues, 

The increasing human population and the upgrade of living standards concur with serious environmental problems, such as the intensification of agriculture and increase in the waste production and contaminant release in the environment. Excessive and indiscriminate use of synthetic chemicals has resulted in food chain contamination, weed and disease resistance, and negative environmental outcomes, leading to great concern regarding the presumed harmful effects on human health. Furthermore, application of these chemical inputs promotes the accumulation of toxic compounds in soils and waters. These external factors exert detrimental effects to organisms, including plants for which they may cause disturbance of the cellular structure and function, aberrations of cell division, disruption of the cytoskeleton system, and genotoxicity. Numerous studies have revealed profound effects of toxic agents to different plant species, indicating a species-specific response depending on differential gene expression. New efforts are addressed to the identification of candidate genes responsible for the discrepancies, which are exploited in medicine chemotherapy and in agricultural herbicide application. This Special Issue focuses on the advances of toxic agent–plant interaction research and aims to outline the perspectives of future research endeavors. We encourage novices and experienced scientists to contribute original research papers and reviews on the effects of any environmental pollutants to plants, in particular of emerging pollutants. Contributions at the organism, cellular, molecular and any -omic level are highly welcome.

Prof. Dr. Eleftherios P. Eleftheriou
Dr. Ioannis-Dimosthenis Adamakis
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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.