Exploring Plant Metabolic Pathways: Unraveling the Complexity of Plant Biochemistry

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce a Special Issue focused on plant metabolic pathways for the journal Plants. This Special Issue aims to provide a comprehensive overview of recent advancements and discoveries to understand the intricate metabolic networks within plants. We believe this collection of articles can significantly contribute to the scientific community's understanding of plant metabolism and its profound effects on plant growth, development, and responses to environmental stimuli.

• Primary Metabolism: This section features articles that delve into the central metabolic pathways of plants, including glycolysis, the TCA cycle, and the pentose phosphate pathway. Contributions should focus on novel insights into pathway regulation, enzyme characterization, metabolite flux analysis, and the impact of primary metabolism on plant development and responses to stress.
• Secondary Metabolism: In this section, we aim to highlight the diverse range of specialized metabolic pathways in plants, leading to the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites. Articles should explore the biosynthetic pathways and regulation of compounds such as alkaloids, flavonoids, terpenoids, and phenolic compounds. Additionally, studies investigating the roles of secondary metabolites in plant defense, signaling, and their interactions with the environment are of great interest.
• Metabolic Engineering: This section focuses on articles that showcase the manipulation and engineering of plant metabolic pathways for various applications. Contributions may cover topics such as metabolic pathway reconstruction, the optimization of enzyme activities, synthetic biology approaches, and metabolic modeling. Emphasis should be placed on the potential applications of metabolic engineering in crop improvement, the production of bioactive compounds, and sustainable agriculture.
• Environmental Influences on Plant Metabolism: This section explores the impact of environmental factors on plant metabolic pathways. Articles should investigate how abiotic stresses (e.g., drought, temperature extremes, nutrient availability) and biotic interactions (e.g., pathogens, symbiotic microorganisms) influence plant metabolism. Additionally, studies elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlying metabolic adjustments in response to changing environmental conditions are of great interest.
• Metabolomics and Systems Biology: This section aims to showcase the application of metabolomics and systems biology approaches to gain a comprehensive understanding of plant metabolic pathways. Contributions may cover topics, including metabolite profiling metabolic network reconstruction, computational modeling, and multi-omics integration. Articles demonstrating how these approaches have advanced our understanding of plant metabolism and providing insights into metabolic regulation and network dynamics are highly valuable.

We strongly believe this Special Issue could be a valuable resource for researchers and scientists interested in plant biochemistry and metabolic pathways. It aims to provide an excellent platform for sharing the latest advancements, methodologies, and discoveries in this field, ultimately contributing to developing sustainable agriculture and the production of bioactive compounds.

Dr. Guiliang Tang
Dr. Ting Lan
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.

• plant metabolism
• metabolic pathways
• primary metabolism
• secondary metabolism
• metabolic engineering
• environmental influences
• abiotic stress
• biotic interactions
• metabolomics
• systems biology