The Jasmonate Pathway: New Actors, Mechanisms and Impacts

Dear Colleagues,

Jasmonates (JAs) define a multifaceted hormonal pathway that shapes numerous aspects of plant development, reproduction, and adaptation to environmental challenges. Since the successful 2015 Special Issue on “The Jasmonate Pathway” in Plants, research on JAs has remained extremely active and formerly emerging questions have attracted the spotlight and become major issues. Historically, JA synthesis and action was associated with plant responses to wounding/herbivory or necrotrophic microbial pathogens, and the range of defense responses and specialized metabolites under JA control is still expanding, particularly in crop species or plant providing health benefits. Interactions with other hormonal pathways are also being better understood, and the importance of JA signaling in the chemical interaction with rhizosphere microorganisms is increasingly established. Importantly, new exciting genetic and chemical approaches now allow to disentangle the mechanisms underlying conserved growth–defense tradeoffs and constitute promising tools to optimize plant adaptation to environmental stress while maintaining high biomass and yields. Furthermore, renewed interest in JA metabolism itself revealed new nodes of signaling regulation and disclosed unexpected modification steps. Finally, recent investigations of the JA pathway in early land plants has provided unprecedented understanding of the key features in pathway evolution and may guide future research directions.

The present Special Issue invites authors in the field to contribute review and research articles on new actors, mechanisms and impacts on the JA pathway in a diversity of plant species or even microorganisms. Topics include, but are not limited to, jasmonate metabolism and targeted modifications, perception, cellular and long-distance signaling mechanisms, hormonal crosstalk, roles in biotic and abiotic stress adaptation, growth inhibition, induction of specialized metabolism, beneficial interactions, reproduction, evolution. Epigenetic aspects of JA regulation are also welcome.

Dr. Thierry Heitz
Guest Editor

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