Protein Engineering of Plant Enzymes for biotechnological, industrial and medicinal applications : an agricultural perspective

The importance of sustainable agriculture is more prominent than ever, and it is closely tied to the development and adoption of environmentally friendly technologies. Within this realm, enzymes, specialized catalysts, play a crucial role in enhancing agricultural sustainability. Nowadays, research is focused on utilizing protein engineering to improve plant response to abiotic and biotic stress, and to increase the availability of essential micronutrients, enzymes and secondary metabolites from crop and medicinal species. Enzymes of microbial origin like lipases, phytases, cellulases, and other such enzymes have proven applications in health, agriculture, and animal feeding. The concept of plurizymes have also attracted agriculture scientists. With the machine learning development, protein design and engineering have been further optimized, offering promising new avenues for the development of numerous enzymes and sustainable agriculture practices. This issue aims to explore the horizons of protein engineering for various applications in agriculture.

This Special Issue welcomes contributions that improve our understanding about novel protein engineering efforts to boost plant health and production.
Potential areas of interest may include, but are not limited to:
● Protein engineering for biotechnological, industrial and medicinal applications
● Machine learning based crop improvement
● Soil health and metabolic engineering
● Plant stress response and metabolic regulation
● Secondary metabolism engineering
● Multi-omic approaches
● Targeted enzyme engineering to improve plant growth and development
● In-silico based approaches

We encourage the submission of different article types to this collection, especially reviews, mini-reviews, and original research papers.
For a complete list of article types that can be considered, please follow this link . Even though abstract submission is not mandatory, we encourage all interested researchers to submit an abstract before submitting their manuscript. Abstracts do not have to coincide with the final abstract of the manuscripts.
This Special Issue accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Special Issue description:
• Brief Research Report
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review

Article types and fees

This Special Issue accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Special Issue description:

• Brief Research Report
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Special Issue accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Special Issue description:

• Brief Research Report
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review

Keywords: Plant growth, sustainable agriculture, machine learning, protein engineering, metabolism engineering