Plants are sessile organisms and so unable to move to evade predation or stress. Development in plants is typically characterized by enormous flexibility in form, a feat that is enabled by the possession of multiple active and quiescent meristematic regions. This capability to change form in response to living conditions is the most easily recognized aspect of plant plasticity. At the same time, flexibility in gene regulation allows for rapid and radical perturbations in metabolic activities in response to a changing living environment. Such metabolic modifications are often visually cryptic. Both forms of plasticity (form and function) are essential components of survival for plants living in a rapidly changing world.

Understanding the role played by epigenetic regulation in enabling plant plasticity represents a significant challenge for the research community. Of particular interest is the adaptive role played by plasticity in both natural and agricultural settings. An improved understanding of how plasticity sets the capacity of a species to survive seasonal and year-to-year fluctuations in growing conditions is particularly germane at a time of unprecedented climatic flux. Equally, work leading to understanding how plasticity can be harnessed through selection offers the enticing long-term prospect of producing more resilient crops. The ultimate goal here would be to bring sufficient understanding to enable the targeted expansion of adaptive plasticity for crop plants.

There has been increased interest in the fields of both plant epigenetics and to a lesser extent, plant plasticity over the past couple of decades. However, the pace and depth of understanding have not matched that seen for animal/human cell and tissue plasticity, where predictive models are emerging based on underlying physical and systems-level understanding of epigenetics. This series of publications will aim to more closely align the two subdisciplines to focus on the interactions between epigenetic change and potentially adaptive plasticity.

Contributions to understanding the interactions between molecular (epigenetic marks, chromatin conformation), cell physiological, signaling, and tissue-level responses in an ontogenetic and environmental context. Primary research papers and focused reviews that integrate information across organizational levels and contribute to a systems-level predictive understanding of plasticity. Emphasis on unique epigenetic processes and properties that have evolved and emerged in plants, including the prevalence of totipotent/pluripotent stem cells.

Including studies that:
• Explain plasticity in the abiotic and/or biotic stress response of plants associated with epigenetic change/regulation
• Identify examples of potentially adaptive epigenetic regulation, especially where an epigenetic change mediates a potentially adaptive change to plant form or function
• Describe associations between developmental or functional plant plasticity and epigenetic change
• Clarify the molecular basis of epigenetic regulation of traits that are potentially adaptive
• Address the evolution of epigenetic control mechanisms or plant plasticity
• Progress towards the application of epigenetic control systems to increase the adaptive plasticity of crop plants
• Highlight possible links between the activation of Transposable Elements and speciation

Topic Editor Graham King is owner of Recombics. The other Topic Editors declare no conflicts of interest with respect to the Research Topic.

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Frontiers in Plant Science

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