Plant Specialized Metabolism

Dear Colleagues,

Plant metabolism encompasses the dynamic and complex arrays of chemical reactions occurring in plant cells and is vital for sustaining their life. It is broadly divided into two categories: (i) the primary or central metabolism and the (ii) specialized, or traditionally known as secondary, metabolism. Primary metabolism is vital for the survival of the plants, while specialized metabolism serves a multitude of functions including reproduction, defense, and the interaction of plants with their environment. In addition to their important roles in plants, many of these metabolites possess other valuable industrial applications such as pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, flavor and fragrance molecules, tackifiers, and dyes to name a few. Plant specialized metabolites exhibit a broad spectrum of chemical diversity. In fact, they constitute a significant portion of nature’s repertoire of chemically diverse natural products. Depending on their chemical structure and biosynthetic origins, plant specialized metabolites are broadly divided into three major groups: (i) phenolics (ii) terpenoids and (iii) nitrogen-containing alkaloids and sulphur-containing compounds.

There has been a tremendous amount of growth in the field of plant specialized metabolites in the last few decades with the recent advancement of omic technologies. The biosynthetic pathways have been discovered for various specialized metabolites with their functional roles being deciphered as well. This knowledge has enabled the development of metabolic engineering strategies of these biomolecules for their industrial applications. In addition, the evolution of the biosynthetic pathways of plant specialized metabolites and its effect on creating their enormous diversity have been the central topic of research for the last decade.

This coming Special Issue on ‘Plant Specialized Metabolism’ aims to focus on the comprehensive understanding of this important class of biomolecules, covering the topics of their biosynthetic pathways, functional characterization, metabolic engineering, and evolutionary studies.

Dr. Aparajita Banerjee
Dr. Wajid Waheed Bhat
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.

• specialized metabolites
• plant metabolism
• gene discovery
• functional characterization
• metabolic engineering
• evolution