Cell signalling pathways control plant growth, development, and responses to environmental perturbations. Protein phosphorylation is a reversible post-translation modification that is critical to specificity and robustness in signal transduction. Phosphorylation is the most predominant post-translational modification, and more than one-third of all eukaryotic proteins are estimated to be phosphorylated. Protein phosphorylation occurs predominantly on serine (Ser), threonine (Thr), and tyrosine (Tyr) residues and is catalysed by protein kinases and oppositely hydrolysed by protein phosphatases. Phosphorylation exerts diverse effects on target proteins, including altered conformation, activity, interaction with other proteins, stability, and/or localization.

Recent advances indicate that protein phosphorylation is essential for diverse aspects of plant life, including plant growth and development and response to biotic and abiotic stresses, leading to several key biological questions for the field:

- Which proteins are phosphorylated in in response to specific stimuli?
- Which kinases and phosphatases mediate pathway-specific phosphorylation and dephosphorylation?
- How does dynamic phosphorylation affect the function of proteins in signalling responses?
- What is the origin and maintenance of regulatory phosphorylation in plants during evolution?
- Can we develop novel tools to predict protein phosphorylation in plants?
- What are the state-of-the-art and most pressing challenges in the field of plant protein phosphorylation?

The purpose of this Research Topic is to report advances highlighting the contribution of protein phosphorylation in plant signalling and to address challenges in the field. This Research Topic will provide an overview of the current state of protein phosphorylation research in plants including biochemical and genetic characterization of phosphorylation-based regulation of diverse signalling pathways (plant growth and development and response to stress), bioinformatics and phosphoproteomic studies. Authors are encouraged to submit original research articles, methods articles, reviews, mini-reviews or perspective articles.

We will include contributions in themes such as:

- Phosphorylation-based regulation of biotic and abiotic interactions and light and hormonal signalling (i.e., brassinosteroids, auxin, ABA, etc.)
- MAPK signalling cascades
- Interplay of phosphorylation and calcium signalling
- Role of protein phosphorylation in vesicular trafficking and subcellular localisation
- Insights on kinase/phosphatase biology, function, and activation mechanisms
- Understanding the role of phosphorylation in signalling specificity
- Evolution of kinases and phosphatases
- Advances in phosphorylation site discovery (phosphoproteomics) and prediction (bioinformatics)
- Role of protein phosphorylation in the cross-talk of signaling pathways

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Frontiers in Plant Science

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