Life Sciences & Biotechnology
Title : | Deciphering the role of CBL-CIPK in regulating WRKY transcription factor in abiotic stress responses |
Area of research : | Life Sciences & Biotechnology |
Principal Investigator : | Prof. Girdhar Kumar Pandey, University Of Delhi |
Timeline Start Year : | 2023 |
Timeline End Year : | 2026 |
Contact info : | gkpandey@south.du.ac.in |
Details
Executive Summary : | In natural environment, plants continuously face adverse temperatures, drought, flooding, nutrient stresses and other abiotic stresses because of the constant climate changes. This gives rise to various socio-agronomical problems specially in the areas of low rainfalls, semi-dry and deserted areas. In fact, areas with heavy rainfalls face flooding related issues causing submergence stress to the plants. similarly, areas with favorable climate may also suffer nutrient deficiencies due to different soil compositions. There are lots of factors contributing to overall compromise with the crop productivity. Even excess fertilizer applications cause nutritional disbalance and loss of fertility in the soil on permanent basis. Despite successful breeding practices there are not sufficient varieties that can withstand such stressful environment. so, in order to develop climate resilient/smart crops that can withstand these extreme conditions, molecular biology methods can be utilized. Before some real experiments are done in staple crops such as wheat and rice. The possibility of integrating important traits into crops are first studied in a model plant such as Arabidopsis. so that the information can be then translated to the crops. In our studies, we are going to study Ca2+-mediated signaling component in Arabidopsis to confer abiotic stress tolerance. Ca2+ is a very crucial second messenger involved in abiotic stress signaling pathways. Ca2+ sensors and responders are present for sensing the diverse array of signals, it seems plants have intricate network of sensor to decode these Ca2+ signal. But this phenomenon is often complex yet tightly regulated in plants. In this project, we propose to functionally characterize Ca2+ mediated CBL-CIPK9 module targeting and regulating a TF, WRKY22 in abiotic stress responses. The detailed functional analysis of Ca2+-CBL-CIPK9-WRKY22 signaling components will provide mechanistic view of Ca2+ signaling regulating a TF in regulating the abiotic stress responses in plants. Based on the previous research in calcium-mediated signaling pathway in Arabidopsis, a few genetic components have been identified, which could be the key player in genetically manipulating the crop to achieve higher yield and productivity. This proposal will open new dimensions in the area of abiotic stress tolerance and the technology developed from this study will enable to generate abiotic stress tolerant crop and hence increasing the agricultural output and increasing farmers income in India. |
Co-PI: | Prof. surekha KatiyarAgarwal, University Of Delhi, New Delhi-110007 |
Total Budget (INR): | 38,53,696 |
Organizations involved