Research Groups

Plant Biology: Plant Molecular Biology

Research Interests and Description

Staff Research Scientist: M.K. Reddy

Research Interests

Abiotic and Biotic stress, gene expression, signalling, crop improvement, transgenics, viral replication and RNAi.

Description of Research

The Group is working on the identification and isolation of differentially expressed genes under different abiotic stress using cDNA subtraction techniques to develop tools for gene discovery in order to investigate plant architecture and adaptation to abiotic stress. The Group is also looking at the characterization of these candidate genes that contribute positively to stress tolerance and understanding their regulated expression mechanisms, in response to various stresses, to understand the molecular mechanisms of stress adaptation in crop plants. All abiotic stresses such as drought, high or low temperature, salinity, heavy metals and pollutants ultimately induce oxidative stress that causes permanent damage to all macromolecules and disturbs the cellular homeostasis and drastically effects the growth and productivity of the plant. We propose to transform and over-express the ascorbate-glutathione pathway into crop plants, by in vitro gene pyramiding of all the genes (superoxide dismutase (SOD), ascorbate peroxidase (APX) Monodedehydroascorbate reductase (MDAR), Dehydroascorbate reductase (DHAR) and Glutathione reductase (GR) involved in this pathway under stress-inducible tissue-specific promoters for effective deactivation of reactive oxygen intermediate (ROI) molecules in multiple redox reactions to protect the plant cells from the oxidative damage in the stressed environment.

Recent Publications

Ramesha, A., Kumar, B., Reddy, P.S., Mishra, R.N., Mahanty, S., Kaul, T., Nair, S., Sopory, S.K., Reddy, M.K. 2009. Molecular cloning and characterization of genes encoding Pennisetum glaucum ascorbate peroxidase and heat-shock factor: Interlinking oxidative and heat-stress responses J. plant physiol. In press

Agarwal, P., Reddy, M.K., Sopory, S.K., Agarwal, P. 2009. Plant Rabs: Characterization, functional diversity and role in stress tolerance. Pl. Mol. Biol. Rep. In press

Jha, B., Agarwal, P.K., Reddy, P., Lal, S, Sopory, S.K. and Reddy, M.K. 2009 Identification of salt-induced genes from Salicornia brachiata, an extreme halophyte through expressed sequence tag analysis. Genes Genet.Syst. 84: 111-120

Reddy, P.S., Mahanty, S., Kaul, T., Nair, S., Sopory, S.K., Reddy, M.K. 2008. A high-throughput genome walking method and its use for cloning unknown flanking sequences. Anal. Biochem. 381, 248-253

Reddy, P.C.O., Sairanganayakulu, G., Thippeswamy, M., Reddy, P. S., Reddy, M.K., Sudhakar, C. 2008. Identification of stress induced genes from the drought tolerant semi-arid legume crop horsegram (Macrotyloma uniflorum (Lam.) Verdc.) through analysis of subtracted expressed sequence tags. Plant Sci. 175, 372-384

Reddy, P.S., Nair, S., Mallikarjuna, G., Kaul, T., Markandeya, G., Sopory, S.K., Reddy, M.K. 2008. A high-throughput, low-cost method for the preparation of 'sequencing-ready' phage DNA template Anal. Biochem. 376, 258-261