Phylogenetics of Molecular Regulators Contributing to Plant Stress Tolerance

Genetic studies on model plants and crops in the last few decades have uncovered numerous genes that play vital roles in plant tolerance to adverse environments. These genes could be used as targets for genetic engineering to improve plant tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses. Recent advances in CRISPR-based genome editing have accelerated modern plant breeding and wild-species domestication. However, the stress regulators in many crops and horticultural cultivars and their wild species remain largely unexplored. Thus, transferring the accumulated knowledge of these molecular regulators from model plants to a wider range of other species is critical for modern plant breeding. Phylogenetic analysis is one of the powerful strategies for studying the functional conservation and diversity of homologous gene families among different species with complete genome sequences available. In addition, many transcriptome datasets of plants under stress conditions have been publicly released, providing a useful resource for addressing the stress response of given gene families. This Special Issue aims to illustrate the phylogenetics of molecular regulators with potential in contributing to plant stress tolerance and their stress response diversity in multiple non-model plants.