Institutional Publications

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Molecular approaches for improving nutritional quality in crops
(John Wiley & Sons, 2024) Gandhi, Nidhi; Singh, Amar Pal
The increasing rate of occurrence of chronic diseases in the human population is creating a global awareness of consuming a healthy diet. It has been shown that regular consumption of a nutritious diet plays a vital role in the prevention of malnutrition as well as a variety of deadly diseases. Food is defined as functional if it provides additional benefits along with basic nutrition, either by reducing the risk of diseases or by improving the health state. There are different strategies and techniques for the identification and quantification of the desired phytochemicals, metabolites, and minerals in the crops and for introducing the superior alleles responsible for the desired traits in the germplasm. By using genome-level genetic studies like GWAS, the genomic regions can be identified that are responsible for the superior metabolic trait. Recently, precise genome editing using CRISPR/ Cas9 technology and overexpression of a few genes in crop plants offer to enhance the production of desired metabolites and micronutrients. Many crops have been produced in the last few years by altering the expression of genes via gene silencing, genome-level editing, mutagenesis, or other strategies of advanced genetic engineering. In this chapter, we summarize the different approaches for enhancing the yield and nutritional quality of crops. The successful attempts to increase the essential vitamins and micronutrients or other beneficial phytochemicals in the crops will be discussed. Altogether, we describe the application of different techniques and strategies to manipulate the genome or precise gene in the crop plants to enhance the food's nutritional quality.
A unique miR775-GALT9 module regulates leaf senescence in Arabidopsis during post-submergence recovery by modulating ethylene and the abscisic acid pathway
(The Company of Biologists, 2022) Mishra, Vishnu; Singh, Archita; Gandhi, Nidhi; Das, Shabari Sarkar; Yadav, Sandeep; Kumar, Ashutosh; Sarkar, Ananda K.
Submergence-induced hypoxic condition negatively affects the plant growth and development, and causes early onset of senescence. Hypoxia alters the expression of a number of microRNAs (miRNAs). However, the molecular function of submergence stress-induced miRNAs in physiological or developmental changes and recovery remains poorly understood. Here we show that miR775 is an Arabidopsis thaliana-specific young and unique miRNA that possibly evolved non-canonically. miR775 post-transcriptionally regulates Galactosyltransferase (GALT9) and their expression is inversely affected at 24 hours of complete submergence stress. The overexpression of miR775 (miR775-Oe) confers enhanced recovery from submergence stress and reduced accumulation of RBOHD and ROS, in contrast to wild type and MIM775 Arabidopsis shoot. A similar recovery phenotype of galt9 mutant indicates the role of miR775-GALT9 module in post-submergence recovery. We predicted Golgi-localized GALT9 to be potentially involved in protein glycosylation. The altered expression of senescence-associated genes (SAG12, SAG29, and ORE1), ethylene signalling (EIN2 and EIN3) and ABA biosynthesis (NCED3) pathway genes in miR775-Oe, galt9 and MIM775 plants. Thus, our results indicate the role of miR775-GALT9 module in post-submergence recovery through a crosstalk with ethylene and ABA pathway.
Role of abiotic stress responsive miRNAs in Arabidopsis root development
(Springer Nature Publishing AG, 2020) Singh, Archita; Gandhi, Nidhi; Mishra, Vishnu; Yadav, Sandeep; Rai, Vandna; Sarkar, Ananda K.
Abiotic stresses like drought, extreme temperature, and lack of sufficient water or nutrients adversely affect plant growth and productivity. The physiological responses of higher plants to the environmental stresses are largely influenced by the root system, which can quickly modulate its developmental pattern under changing water, nutrient, and temperature, as an adaptive response. Protein coding genes, phytohormones and microRNAs (miRNAs) are among the key players which imparts crucial intrinsic role in shaping the root development and its environment adaptive growth pattern. Among these factors, miRNAs belong to a class of small non-coding RNAs of 21–24 nucleotides in length, which regulates various aspects of plant growth and development by negatively regulating their target genes through either transcriptional cleavage or translational inhibition. Although many miRNAs have been identified to be differentially regulated under various abiotic stress conditions, only a limited number of them have been characterized, due to the complex nature of its regulation. However, some of the miRNAs, such as miR156, miR165/166, miR169 etc., have recently been shown to be involved in both abiotic stress response and root development, indicating the diverse role of miRNA mediated gene regulation. The field of miRNA mediated gene regulation is dynamically expanding and more miRNAs are being characterized for their function. Current review focuses on miRNAs that are differentially regulated by major abiotic stresses as well as are involved in root development in Arabidopsis thaliana. We highlight their role in regulation of multiple and diverse aspects of developmental and physiological processes in Arabidopsis.

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