Nowadays, plant biotechnology faces many important challenges, including the development of strategies for secure food supply, the adequate acquisition and management of plant-derived products for human subsistence (woods, pharmaceuticals, biofuels, etc), as well as the generation of plants that are able to cope with the constant effects of biotic and abiotic stress conditions in the era of changing climatic conditions. Plants are sessile organisms that are able to adapt or acclimate after constant exposition to environmental stress conditions; nevertheless, in most cases growth rate and yield are reduced below optimum levels. Increases in global warming, climatic changes, soil degradation, and pollution are affecting dramatically the plant kingdom.

Advances in plant molecular biology and biotechnology have changed our capabilities for gene discovery, for the study of tissue-specific promoters, the functional characterization of genes, gene pyramiding, and the generation of efficient methods for plant genetic transformation and/or plant genome manipulation. All of these beneficial applications offer the possibility to achieve pest resistance, abiotic stress tolerance, crop yield improvement, and excel food nutritional quality.

In this regard, the understanding of plant molecular mechanisms underlying biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, the characterization of hormone-mediated signaling pathways, and the molecular interaction and crosstalk among pathways will improve our knowledge in plant stress biology.

This issue will focus on molecular responses to plant biotic and abiotic stresses. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Stress physiology and molecular biology
• Transcriptional/posttranscriptional regulation
• Traductional/posttraductional regulation
• Plant biotechnology and genetic engineering
• Bioinformatics and stress biology

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jbb/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: