Growth–Defense Trade–Off in Plants: The Role of Redox Signaling and Antioxidants

Dear Colleagues,

Global climate change and associated adverse abiotic stress conditions (extreme temperatures and light intensity, waterlogging) greatly influence plant yield and quality worldwide, as well as agricultural sustainability and food security in general. In addition, in the natural environment, plants face a variety of abiotic and biotic stresses such as drought, salinity, heavy metals, oxygen deprivation, pathogenesis, herbivory, etc. To maintain energy balance between growth and stress tolerance, plants have developed numerous regulatory mechanisms on the level of transcription, translation, and post-translational and epigenetic modifications.

Emerging evidence is pointing to the crucial role of redox metabolism in growth–defense strategies in plants on the subcellular level, as well as in a long-distance signaling. Under adverse environmental conditions, chloroplasts become a prime site of ROS generation due to successive reduction of molecular oxygen at the electron transport chain, leading to disturbance of cellular redox homeostasis and eventually to an oxidative stress. Under compromised protein biosynthesis, the twisting point between growth and defense is allocation of photoassimilates to the biosynthesis of phenylpropanoids and cell wall lignification. Cell wall and associated-phenolic compounds and lignin acts as a first barrier, physical and chemical, to pathogens and toxic compounds from soil, but they are also one of the main sites for ROS production. Recent discoveries of novel modulators and mechanisms that modify cell wall stiffening and loosening have shown the crucial role of cell wall-bound phenolics, peroxidases, and non-enzymatic antioxidants in the tradeoff strategy between growth and defense. The current Special Issue focuses on integrative approaches to the role of ROS signaling and induction of antioxidative metabolism including priming, which regulate growth–defense processes in the natural environment and under laboratory conditions under stress.

As the role of ROS and antioxidants depends on actual cellular concentration, for plant stress physiology studies, a choice of proper methods aiming to avoid errors that can possibly lead to either inaccurate data or misinterpretations of the results is of great importance. Therefore, innovative technologies applied to ROS and antioxidant levels and cellular distribution are also welcome. We invite original research articles or review articles on the crosstalk between primary (enzymatic and nonenzymatic, ascorbate, glutathione, etc.) and secondary antioxidants (terpenes, hydroxycinnamates, flavonoids, etc.), between chloroplasts and cell wall redox systems, interplay between hormones and antioxidant metabolism in signaling transduction under stress, as well as spatiotemporal ROS and antioxidant distribution, which are all crucial for tradeoff growth–defense strategy in plants. 

Prof. Dr. Sonja Veljović Jovanović
Dr. Angelos K. Kanellis
Dr. Biljana Kukavica
Dr. Mellidou Ifigeneia
Guest Editors

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• antioxidants
• ascorbic acid
• abiotic and biotic stress
• growth–defense
• acclimation