Dear Colleagues,

Protein sequences contain essential structural elements that lead to their functionality. These elements normally are highly conserved and can be directly involved in functionality or have a complementary role through diverse mechanisms (allosterism, cooperativity, postransductional modifications, among others). The distribution of structural elements along a protein sequence can give important clues about the underlying evolutionary process. From an evolutionary perspective, changes in sequences, protein structures, and functions can drive phenotypic changes through neutral and adaptive mechanisms. Protein sequence, structure, and function are inherently linked through evolution. The increasing number of plant genome projects available as well as the development of computational tools and new approaches and experimental methods have made proteome evolution an active area of research.

Despite the amount of available information, there are still open questions and research challenges in this field. For example, are plant protein functions well-annotated in the database? Are sequence analyses enough to properly assign a plant function? How does gene localization along chromosomes affect the functionality of the encoded protein? How does the folding process change through evolution and how can it affect plants’ adaptative functions? How do mobile structural elements contribute to adaptive plant protein functions? How do ductile regions (IDRs) contribute to the functionality of plant proteins? How have duplication events influenced plant protein structure and function? Which are the most divergent functions?

Authors are invited to submit original research papers, perspectives, hypotheses, opinions, reviews, modeling approaches, and methods focused on the evolution of protein structure and function in plants at all levels to this Special Issue. Articles may include individual sequences, structural and functional protein studies, as well as overall proteome and phylogenetic analyses, and may be done in model plants, crop plants, trees, aquatic plants, microalgae, and cyanobacteria species.

Dr. Inmaculada Yruela
Guest Editor

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.

• plants
• proteomes
• proteins
• sequence analysis
• sequence alignment
• structure
• function
• phylogenetics
• protein evolution
• orthologues
• paralogs
• computational analysis
• bioinformatics
• biophysics
• folding
• protein family