oa Editorial [Hot Topic: Proteins in Signalling Pathways and Chromosome Stability in Plants (Guest Editor: Jiri Fajkus)]

The roles of proteins in cells and organisms have always been the subject of intense research. The advent of proteomic techniques and the full exploitation of genomic and advanced biophysical approaches has accelerated protein research and increased our understanding of interactions and crosstalk among individual proteins and whole pathways. This issue presents a window on current plant protein research in directions which are essential for understanding the life and development of plants and at the same time represent hot topics for protein research today. Proteins are not only the ultimate products of genetic information, but also important guardians of chromosome stability. This is nicely demonstrated in the article by Peska et al., which reviews the role of proteins at chromosome termini, the telomeres, and focuses specifically on a group of double-strand DNA binding proteins possessing telobox, a Myb-related DNA-binding domain. The authors present telobox as a convenient motif for searching for telomere-binding proteins, but they emphasize pertinently the necessity of further critical evaluation of their true telomeric role. Interestingly, based on the presence of telobox motif, a putative telomeric protein in C. parqui, a plant species lacking canonical telomeric sequences, is reported. A related review by Amiard et al. starts where the previous one ends. Beginning with a brief introduction to telomeric proteins, it provides a succinct overview of recent advances in understanding the role of proteins in DNA damage response and shows how proteins involved in DNA damage response and repair not only contribute to the recognition of telomere dysfunction, but surprisingly, are directly implicated in telomere homeostasis itself....