New PeerJ Life & Environment and PeerJ Analytical Chemistry cross journal Special Issue - "Analytical Methods in Plant Science"

Edited by

Robert Winkler
Professor, Head of Laboratory, CINVESTAV Unidad Irapuato

Dr Scott Wallen
Academic Staff, Florida Polytechnic University

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Photosynthetic organisms build complex organic molecules from simple inorganic compounds, using sunlight as an energy source. As primary producers, plants and algae are essential participants of complex ecosystems. The oxygen released by their photosynthetic processes makes aerobic life on Earth possible and is critical to maintaining carbon cycle balance.

Although humans entirely depend on the activity of plants for respiration, nutrition, and raw materials, adequate methods for studying them are often lacking. We know about the importance of plant interactions with other organisms (the 'holobiont' concept) and the crucial role of chemical communication. Yet, we have been limited by the methods used for observing physiological processes like inter- and intraspecies plant interactions under ambient conditions.

High resolution microscopy can now provide detailed insights into tissue and cell structure. Omics technologies, such as genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, can generate vast amounts of data at a molecular level. Novel approaches permit the real-time monitoring of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), the untargeted localization of molecules by mass imaging, and the high-throughput sequencing of microbial communities.

This special issue invites the submission of manuscripts that report original methods for analyzing plants and algae, ideally in their natural context. Further, novel applications, for example, in plant phenotyping and breeding and software for data mining and integration, are welcome.

Submissions are welcome to both PeerJ – the Life & Environment journal and PeerJ Analytical Chemistry.

Topics
Including, but not limited to:
Biosynthetic Pathways And Natural Products Structure Elucidation
Imaging And Remote Sensing
Microscopy / Spectroscopy / Mass Spectrometry
Monitoring Plant Health (Diseases And Abiotic Stress)
Nanotechnology And Biogenic Nanoparticles
New Plant Breeding Strategies (Metabolic Markers And Genome-Wide Selection)
Network Dynamics (Regulation And Metabolism)
Plant Interactions (Inter-And Intraspecies)
Plant Omics
Plant Phenotyping
Real-Time Monitoring Of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)
Screening Methods (Bioactive Compounds / Biofuels / Bioplastics)
Software: Big Data / Data Integration / Data Mining

Find out more and submit your abstract for consideration on the Special Issue homepage: https://peerj.com/special-issues/89-analytical-methods-plant-science