Ritu Bhalla

Publications (3)9.18 Total impact

• Article: Over-expression of OSRIP18 increases drought and salt tolerance in transgenic rice plants.

  Shu-Ye Jiang, Ritu Bhalla, Rengasamy Ramamoorthy, Hong-Fen Luan, Prasanna Nori Venkatesh, Minne Cai, Srinivasan Ramachandran
  [show abstract] [hide abstract]
  ABSTRACT: Both drought and high salinity stresses are major abiotic factors that limit the yield of agricultural crops. Transgenic techniques have been regarded as effective ways to improve crops in their tolerance to these abiotic stresses. Functional characterization of genes is the prerequisite to identify candidates for such improvement. Here, we have investigated the biological functions of an Oryza sativa Ribosome-inactivating protein gene 18 (OSRIP18) by ectopically expressing this gene under the control of CaMV 35S promoter in the rice genome. We have generated 11 independent transgenic rice plants and all of them showed significantly increased tolerance to drought and high salinity stresses. Global gene expression changes by Microarray analysis showed that more than 100 probe sets were detected with up-regulated expression abundance while signals from only three probe sets were down-regulated after over-expression of OSRIP18. Most of them were not regulated by drought or high salinity stresses. Our data suggested that the increased tolerance to these abiotic stresses in transgenic plants might be due to up-regulation of some stress-dependent/independent genes and OSRIP18 may be potentially useful in further improving plant tolerance to various abiotic stresses by over-expression.
  Transgenic Research 10/2011; 21(4):785-95. · 2.75 Impact Factor
• Source

  Available from: Rengasamy Ramamoorthy

  Article: Genome-wide survey of the RIP domain family in Oryza sativa and their expression profiles under various abiotic and biotic stresses.

  Shu-Ye Jiang, Rengasamy Ramamoorthy, Ritu Bhalla, Hong-Fen Luan, Prasanna Nori Venkatesh, Minne Cai, Srinivasan Ramachandran
  [show abstract] [hide abstract]
  ABSTRACT: Ribosome-inactivating proteins (RIPs) are N-glycosidases that inhibit protein synthesis by depurinating rRNA. Despite their identification more than 25 years ago, little is known about their biological functions. Here, we report a genome-wide identification of the RIP family in rice based on the complete genome sequence analysis. Our data show that rice genome encodes at least 31 members of this family and they all belong to type 1 RIP genes. This family might have evolved in parallel to species evolution and genome-wide duplications represent the major mechanism for this family expansion. Subsequently, we analyzed their expression under biotic (bacteria and fungus infection), abiotic (cold, drought and salinity) and the phytohormone ABA treatment. These data showed that some members of this family were expressed in various tissues with differentiated expression abundances whereas several members showed no expression under normal growth conditions or various environmental stresses. On the other hand, the expression of many RIP members was regulated by various abiotic and biotic stresses. All these data suggested that specific members of the RIP family in rice might play important roles in biotic and abiotic stress-related biological processes and function as a regulator of various environmental cues and hormone signaling. They may be potentially useful in improving plant tolerance to various abiotic and biotic stresses by over-expressing or suppressing these genes.
  Plant Molecular Biology 09/2008; 67(6):603-14. · 4.15 Impact Factor
• Article: Metabolomics and its role in understanding cellular responses in plants.

  Ritu Bhalla, Kothandaraman Narasimhan, Sanjay Swarup
  [show abstract] [hide abstract]
  ABSTRACT: A natural shift is taking place in the approaches being adopted by plant scientists in response to the accessibility of systems-based technology platforms. Metabolomics is one such field, which involves a comprehensive non-biased analysis of metabolites in a given cell at a specific time. This review briefly introduces the emerging field and a range of analytical techniques that are most useful in metabolomics when combined with computational approaches in data analyses. Using cases from Arabidopsis and other selected plant systems, this review highlights how information can be integrated from metabolomics and other functional genomics platforms to obtain a global picture of plant cellular responses. We discuss how metabolomics is enabling large-scale and parallel interrogation of cell states under different stages of development and defined environmental conditions to uncover novel interactions among various pathways. Finally, we discuss selected applications of metabolomics.
  Plant Cell Reports 01/2006; 24(10):562-71. · 2.27 Impact Factor