Call for articles -Transcriptional and post-transcriptional mechanisms regulating salt tolerance-CLOSED

High concentration of soluble salts in agricultural soils, termed as soil salinity, is a key abiotic stress causing substantial losses worldwide, both in terms of yield and quality of the crop produced. Recent years have witnessed a rapid conversion of large proportions of fertile arable lands into saline patches and consequently soil salinity is seen as a threat to food security. Therefore, finding ways to improve plant’s tolerance to salinity stress has become a major challenge for agriculturists, plant breeders and biotechnologists. Salinity stress is a complex phenomenon that reduces plant growth and development via inducing water stress, oxidative stress, ionic imbalances and toxicity, membrane disorganization, reduced cell division and expansion, disruption of key metabolic processes and phytohormones.

The complex nature of salinity-induced perturbations at molecular, cellular and whole plant physiological levels necessitates the comprehensive understanding of the responsive physiological and molecular mechanisms plants adopt to offset the harmful effects of salt stress. To turn on the protective mechanisms, plants trigger a network of regulatory mechanisms including reprogramming of expression of several key genes at transcriptional and/or post-transcriptional levels. These regulations are pivotal for plants to restore and re-establish their cellular homeostasis during stress and the recovery phase. Thanks to the advanced, high throughput sequencing method, available databases and in silico tools, our insights into the regulatory mechanisms of salinity stress response and tolerance at transcriptional/post-transcriptional levels have improved considerably in recent years. Several major players have emerged at transcriptional levels and post-transcriptional levels such as transcription factors, regulatory non-coding RNA species including small and micro-RNAs with key regulatory roles in sensing and modulating the salinity stress impacts on major crop plants. These regulatory elements are seen as major targets for engineering salinity tolerance in important crops.

Through this special issue, we aim to bring together high-quality Original Research, Reviews and Short Communication highlighting various transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms underlying salinity stress sensing, signalling, and responses in important crops and model plants. Epigenetic and/or epigenomic regulations of salinity stress tolerance may also be addressed. Manuscripts aimed to highlight the mechanistic insights into these regulations would be welcomed. Modern tools and techniques, both analytical and computational, useful for identifying, characterizing and functionally validating post-transcriptional regulators like lncRNAs, sRNAs, siRNAs, and miRNAs may be covered.

• Transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulations of salinity stress response and tolerance in major crops and model plants
• Role of transcription factors and non-coding regulatory RNAs in salinity stress response and tolerance
• Epigenetic/epigenomic marks and their regulatory roles in salinity tolerance
• State-of-the-art in investigating regulations of salinity stress responses and tolerance
• Other related aspects

Deadline – 31^st March 2021 PROLONGED TO 31st MAY

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Guest editors