About this Research Topic

Background

Economic plants, ranging from ornamental plants to crops to those used in traditional medicine, are vital for the development of humans both now and in the future. As genetic and ‘omic technologies improve and become more cost-effective, whole genomes have been analysed for an increasingly large number of economic plant species. This makes genomics research increasingly accessible and able to answer an ever-broader range of questions. Based on genomic analyses, not only can we clearly understand the genetic underpinnings of biological traits, but also clarify molecular networks regulating complex traits and their interaction with the environment. Similarly, the cloning, identification, modification, and transformation of genes associated with important plant traits have promoted the rapid development of synthetic biology and the "green revolution" in economic plant development.

Now, with the decreasing sequencing cost, advances in long-read sequencing, and advancements in assembly, and annotation algorithms, exponentially increasing volumes of plant genome data are becoming publicly available. However, it is recognized that there are still large gaps in understanding the breadth of plant life on earth. For example, at the taxonomic level of order, more than 50 plant orders still lack representative reference genomes; highlighting future opportunities. In addition, with such a massive accumulation of data, efficient storage and mining of genetic information have become recognized as an important task in understanding the biological meaning of this data. Functional genomics, synthetic biology, and nucleotide database construction have become increasingly important issues. Ultimately, delivering on these challenges will be key for the world to achieve "carbon peak" and "carbon neutrality" in the 21st century.

In this Research Topic, we intend to incorporate the contributions from leading plant scientists focusing on genome sequencing and database construction for a broad range of economic plants. This will include work focusing on biosynthetic pathway mining, functional gene identification, pan-genome phylogenetic studies, and so on. Authors are invited to submit original research, reviews/mini-reviews, methods, and opinion articles related to, but not exclusively limited to, the following topics:

- New reference genomes of economic plants
- Re-assembly, and re-annotation of existing genomes with high integrity
- Understanding gene function and exploring biosynthetic pathways in reference genomes
- New methods of genomic analysis
- Construction of economic plant nucleotide database
- Studies of economic plant diversity and, evolution
- Molecular breeding of new varieties based on genomic methods

Keywords: economic, plant genome, database construction, ornamental, crops, genetics, genome, gene function

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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