Plant Genomics

Biography

Biography: Soumitra Paul

Abstract

Food security is a major challenging issue in developing countries like India where rice is the    staple crop   .   Abiotic stress   like drought affe cts most of the  rice production  in India. The ge neration of drought tolerant rice cultiva r by overexpression AtDREB1A is an important breakthrough in   biotechnology   resear ch. In addition, rice contains very little amount of iron and zinc in the  edible endosperm . Therefore, biofortification of these two micronutrients in rice grains i  s believed to be the most promising strategy for enhancing mineral nutrition in diets. The bioengineered high iron rice grain has already been developed by overexpression of soybean and rice endogenou s ferritin genes. Low phytate rice grain by   RNAi   mediated silencing of phytic acid biosynthesis also facilitates iron accumulation in milled rice grain. However, the molecula r signaling network operating in  transgenic crops  still remains unclear. In our cu rrent study, we performed the  proteomic  analysis of DREB1A over expressin g drought tolerant rice cultivars. The proteome profile of rice roots revealed metabol ic alteration in energy and carbohydrate metabolism. A novel r40c1 protein species has been identified which play a cruc ial role in DREB1A mediated drought tolerance. Recently, the role of  miRNAs  in iron transport has been deciphered in transgenic ferritin over expressing rice plants which unravel the molecular mechanism  of iron loading in high iron rice grains. Four novel miRNAs targeting NRAMP4 has been considered for enhancement of iron loading in transgenic rice plants.