Medicinal plants are the staple pharmaceutical source for most of the population throughout the world. Its importance is even more evident in China due to its long history of usage in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The chemical diversity of natural products from medicinal plants has a profound and lasting impact on human health with a variety of intriguing structures and biological activities. Rapid development of downstream industrial chains requires the acquisition of medicinal plant resources from wild to domestic. There is a huge demand for creating medicinal plants with high yield, high resistance, and high productivity. Due to short breeding history, the development of germplasm resources of medicinal plants obviously lags behind that of crops. Impurity of germplasm, unclear genetic background, and lacking  genetic transformation system, which greatly restrict the efficiency and success rate of creating excellent germplasm resources for medicinal plants.

Plant biotechnology, in the simplest and broadest sense, is a series of enabling technologies which involve the manipulation of plants or their subcellular components to provide useful products, processes, or services. The strength of this definition is its inclusiveness for permitting the coming together of fields as diverse as molecular biology, practical and sustainable agriculture, and others. Cutting-edge biotechnologies such as new genomics methods, high-throughput phenotyping platforms, precise genome-editing tools, environmental microbiome optimization, and synthetic biology strategies have shown promising routes to extend our understanding of unsolved molecular biology questions in medicinal plants, and facilitate integrations of the knowledge for germplasm resource applications. Tremendous progress has been achieved in unravelling the molecular mechanisms of various herb traits, and dissecting the underlying regulatory networks, thus making it  possible to rear tailor-made ideal herbs from decoding to designing. Although biotechnologies have provided new technical support for the quality improvement and sustainable utilization of medicinal plants and shed a bright future, there are still many challenges in theory, technology, and standardization.

In order to advance the application of biotechnology in the research of germplasm resources of medicinal plants, we have designed the following topics for a new special issue. We cordially invite submissions of full-length articles, short communication, and review/mini reviews and perspectives that are related to these topics.

Please note that the topics we provided may not cover all research in this field. If your topic is related but not listed here, please contact us.

●  Molecular cloning of functional genes from wild medicinal plant resources. This work will result in patenting functional genes and their products;

●  Elucidation of biosynthetic pathway and metabolic regulatory mechanisms of important active ingredients in medicinal plants;

●  Development of efficient and species-specific transgenic and/or gene editing technologies for medicinal plants;

●  Multiploidisation or genetic engineering of medicinal plants for improved quality and quantity such as for enhanced insect and disease resistance and for improved productivity of pharmaceutical compounds;

●  Molecular farming to preserve precious and endangered medicinal plant species.

●  Application of synthetic biology technology in heterologous production of active ingredients of medicinal plants;

●  Biosafety and field assessment of genetically modified medicinal plants;

●  Fundamental research in cultivation of elite germplasm resources of medicinal plants and breeding of new varieties.

Guest Editors

Lei Zhang, Dept. Pharmaceutical Botany, School of Pharmacy, Naval Medical University

Hong Wu, South China Agricultural University, China

Ruibing Chen, Dept. Pharmaceutical Botany, School of Pharmacy, Naval Medical University

Submission Deadline

The deadline for manuscript submissions is Dec 31, 2024, but we can accommodate extensions on a case-by-case basis. All papers will be published as open access articles upon acceptance.

Submission Instructions

Please submit the full manuscript to Medicinal Plant Biology via our Online Submission System. Additionally, please choose a topic of this Special Issue when submitting and mention it in your cover letter. For further inquiries, please contact Guest Editors

Lei Zhang (zhanglei@smmu.edu.cn)

Hong Wu (wh@scau.edu.cn)

Ruibing Chen (rbchenstar@163.com)