About this Research Topic

Background

Ginkgo trees play a pivotal role in East Asian countries as a source of vital nutrients when their nuts are cooked, offering essential compounds such as carbohydrates and carotenoids. Beyond nutrition, Ginkgo nuts have served as traditional remedies for ailments such as coughs or asthma. Furthermore, extracts derived from the green leaves of Ginkgo are processed into medications to combat dementia in Europe. These examples highlight the distinctive qualities of primary and secondary metabolites generated by Ginkgo trees.

Ginkgo plants exhibit rapid growth and resilience to environmental factors, making them valuable as roadside trees, firebreaks, and windbreaks, particularly due to their resistance to exhaust gases and their ability to retard flames. Moreover, the unique development and propagation mechanisms of the Ginkgo plant body add to its distinctiveness. Known as a living fossil, Ginkgo appeared on Earth 200 million years ago, and it holds a special significance in the evolution of plants due to its primitive reproductive process involving fertilization by sperm. Humans first recorded Ginkgo about 1,000 years ago in China and it was introduced to Europe at the end of the 17th century. Ginkgo has now spread widely throughout the temperate zone of the world. Although it has a strong vitality, its ability to reproduce in the wild is weak, so its propagation was mainly due to transporting and cultivating by humans.

This Research Topic aims to explore these specific characteristics and consider their corresponding physiologies. The investigations will be contextualized within broader considerations, including different Ginkgo cultivars, molecular data of mitochondrial genome diversity, fossils, chromosomes, non-reproductive propagation (lignotuber or fallen tree update), sex transformation in tree development (microRNA expression), high-speed video recording of swimming sperm, resistance to NOX or desiccation, differentiation of xylem, or biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, including isoprenoids (carotenoids, chlorophylls, or ginkgolides) and flavonoids. These topics will shed light on the phylogenetic development of Gingko over 200 million years. We seek to uncover potential overlapping gene regulation systems. Future analyses, using next-generation sequencing like SNP or RNA-seq analyses, are anticipated to reveal comprehensive gene expression networks in Ginkgo biloba based on genome information.

Historically, diverse studies have been conducted on Ginkgo biloba, ranging from cytological studies of swimming sperm (Hirase 1896, Ridge et al. 1997), mutants such as Ohatsuki (Fujii 1896, Sakisaka 1927) or Ochokoba (Hara 1997), biochemical studies on secondary metabolites (Nakanishi 2000, van Beek 2000), cytogenetic analyses of chromosomes (Ishikawa 1910, Hizume 1997), to sex conversion (Nagata et al. 2016). While these researchers have retired from their work, recent advancements include heterologous gene expression of methylerythritol phosphate pathway (Kim et al. 2021) and revelation of the Ginkgo genome sequence (Zhao et al. 2019, Liu et al. 2021) with SNPs (Wu et al. 2019).

With this Research Topic, we hope to foster collaboration with Ginkgo researchers globally, and thus submissions are welcome on, but not limited to, the following topics:

- Stress responses
- Secondary metabolites
- Photosynthesis
- Propagation
- Horticulture
- Natural population
- Organ development and sex determination
- Phylogeny of Ginkgo
- Local cultivars
- Organelle diversity
- Fossils
- Chromosome and genomes

Important: Please note that manuscripts containing purely descriptive studies that fail to shed fresh light on the biology of Ginkgo and the mechanistic underpinnings underlying the processes or features under study will not be considered.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Editorial
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• ... View all formats

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 Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Editorial
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review

Keywords: Ginkgo Biloba, primary and secondary metabolites

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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