Anshu Alok

University of Minnesota | UMN · College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences

The WRKY gene family is widely distributed in plants and plays essential roles in plant development and stress response. Despite extensive characterization of WRKY transcription factors in many plants, a genome-wide analysis of the WRKY gene family in Pisum sativum is still lacking. The central method of this study focused on the retrieval and char...

CRISPR/Cas endonuclease has emerged, as a powerful genetic engineering tool. It is simple yet highly affordable and robust. This book provides a basic introduction to the mechanism and architecture of the CRISPR/Cas. It enlightens the readers about the new advancements such as gene insertion, transcriptional activation, suppression, gene tagging, m...

Iron is an essential plant nutrient, and a continuous supply of it is required as it is a key factor in various metabolic processes, including photosynthesis, chlorophyll synthesis, and respiration. Various transcription factors are known to regulate iron homeostasis in plants, and the bHLH transcription factor family is one of them. The StbHLH47 i...

Date palm tree (Phoenix dactylifera L.) has been flourishing for millions of years and includes more than 600 varieties; moreover, date fruits are relished worldwide, especially in middle-eastern countries. Besides its popularity, the tree has undergone the least development through conventional breeding techniques compared with other crops because...

Introduction Members of the family Geminiviridae have been reported to infect either a monocot plant or a dicot plant, but not both. This study reports a geminivirus, Wheat Dwarf India Virus (WDIV), first identified in wheat, that is capable of infecting both monocot and dicot plants and acting as a viral vector. Objectives This study was aimed at...

The WRKY gene family is widely distributed in plants and plays essential roles in plant development and stress response. Despite extensive characterization of WRKY transcription factors in many plants, a genome-wide analysis of the WRKY gene family in Pisum sativum is still lacking. The central method of this study focused on the retrieval and char...

Background Genome editing technology has become one of the excellent tools for precise plant breeding to develop novel plant germplasm. The Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) is the most prominent pathogen that infects several Solanaceae plants, such as tobacco, tomato, and capsicum, which requires critical host factors for infection and replication of its...

Vitex negundo L. (Lamiaceae) is an aromatic species used to cure several illnesses worldwide. The plant is a panacea of herbal formulations with several of its metabolites exhibiting significant pharmacological properties. The present study is an attempt to find the impact of silicon nanoparticles (SiNPs) on inducing in vitro flowering in V. negund...

Keymessage CbSE overexpression increased stigmasterol levels and altered plant morphology. The genes upstream and downstream of CbSE were found to be upregulated, which confirms its regulatory role in the saponin biosynthetic pathway. Abstract Chlorophytum borivilianum is a high-value medicinal plant with many promising preclinical applications th...

Gardenia jasminoides J. Ellis (Cape jasmine) is a horticultural plant. It is difficult to cultivate species due to pathogen sensitivity; hence, the demand for this species is gradually increasing. Thus, micropropagation would be a convenient tool to produce quality planting material, but the higher rate of mortality constitutes a constraint to larg...

The present study aimed to determine the foliar micro-morpho-anatomical features of in vitro cultured Gardenia jasminoides J. Ellis (Rubiaceae) to compare the effect of exogenous supplementation of growth regulators (cytokinins; 6-benzylaminopurine and Kinetin), in order to attenuate heterotrophic nutrition (in vitro) induced structural disorders i...

Sustainable management of plant diseases has become crucial in the context of climate change and food security. In this regard, several plant disease control methods are in use, however the RNA silencing or RNA interference (RNAi) technology is a promising tool for molecular breeding aimed at crop improvement that is efficacious, environmentally sa...

Potato is one of the most important crops, and its trait improvement through genetic engineering is of utmost need. CRISPR/Cas9 mediated genome editing tool and its advancement revolutionized genetic and metabolic engineering. Cas9 endonuclease requires gRNA and PAM for targeted genome editing. Delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 component via Rhizobium is mos...

Vanilla planifolia – a natural source of vanillin is the world's highest-valued spice crop with endangered status and the only hand-pollinated crop globally. The present study evaluates the effect of exogenous silver nitrate (AgNO3) on effective direct and indirect somatic embryogenesis in V. planifolia for the first time. The direct and indirect s...

The present study was intended to develop an effective micropropagation system of the economically important ‘Grand Nain’ variety of Musa acuminata Colla (AAA) having high structural fidelity and significant potential to multiply shoots under in vitro conditions using the non-conventional cytokinin 6-benzoyladenine (BOA, C12H9N5O). The young sword...

Crinum malabaricum Lekhak & Yadav is a recently discovered and critically endangered aquatic bulbous plant of the family Amaryllidaceae. It gained attention as a wild source of the acetylcholinesterase inhibiting alkaloid ‘galanthamine’ used to treat Alzheimer and Parkinson diseases. The bulbs of this plant contain the highest amount of galanthamin...

Epigenetic changes are the heritable modifications in genes without altering DNA sequences. The epigenetic changes occur in the plant genomes to regulate gene expression patterns, which were used to regulate different biological processes, including coping various environmental stresses. These changes, including DNA methylation, non-coding RNA regu...

A reliable and stable Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation system for Artemisia pallens has been developed using cell suspension cultures derived from cotyledon explants. Cotyledon, attached cotyledon, and compound leaves were found to be suitable for the induction of callus among five different types of explants tested. The yellow friable...

Velamentous roots of orchids are desiccation resistant and help in anchorage and absorption of water and nutrients. The specialized multi-layered, spongy epidermis ‘velamen radicum’ is meant for epiphytic adaptation in economically and ecologically significant ‘grey orchid’ Vanda tessellata. The development of velamen tissue during various stages o...

An in vitro regeneration method with functional morpho-structural and physiological traits has been optimized for Aloe vera L. in the present study. Among the various types and treatments of cytokinins [6-benzylaminopurine, BAP; 6-(3-hydroxybenzylamino) purine, mT (meta-topolin), and 1-phenyl-3-(1,2,3-thiadiazol-5-yl) urea, TDZ] tested for shoot in...

A high throughput regeneration protocol has been developed for Lagerstroemia speciosa through node explants under the regime of various plant growth regulators (PGRs). This protocol can provide an alternative mode to seed-grown plants and minimize the cost–time of regeneration, significantly. Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium containing various combi...

In vitro propagation is extremely important for the rapid multiplication of a wide range of orchids. This study aimed to investigate the effects of polyethylene glycol (PEG) on morpho-anatomical improvements and ex vitro development of Spathoglottis plicata, a terrestrial orchid. Various concentrations of PEG (100-500 mg L⁻¹) were incorporated with...

Myo-inositol is one of the most abundant form of inositol. The myo-inositol (MI) serves as substrate to diverse biosynthesis pathways and hence it is conserved across life forms. The biosynthesis of MI is well studied in animals. Beyond biosynthesis pathway, implications of MI pathway and enzymes hold potential implications in plant physiology and...

The three amino acid loop extension (TALE) genes of the homeobox superfamily are responsible for numerous biological functions in plants. Herein, we identified a total of 72 TaTALE genes in the allohexaploid genome of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and performed a comprehensive investigation for gene and protein structural properties, phylogeny...

Various abiotic stresses severely affect crop plant germination, growth, and productivity worldwide. Plants exhibit numerous mechanisms to battle against hostile abiotic stress. Out of several mechanisms, here we focused on the polyamine metabolic pathway. Polyamines exist in the plants with free or covalently/noncovalently conjugated forms and mai...

CRISPR/Cas mediated genome editing is a revolutionary approach for manipulating the plant genome. However, the success of this technology is highly dependent on selection of a specific vector and the other components. A plant-specific CRISPR/Cas vector usually consists of a Cas gene, target-specific gRNA, leader sequence, selectable marker gene, pr...

Grapes (Vitis vinifera L.) are a very popular fruit and are produced around the world. They are consumed as a fresh ripe fruit, dried fruit, juice, and processed product such as wine and are a good source of human nutrition. We aimed to investigate and analyze the nutritional and phytochemical components of grape cultivars, mostly cultivated in dif...

Climate change, malnutrition, and food insecurity are the inevitable challenges being faced by the agriculture sector today. Plants are susceptible to extreme temperatures during the crucial phases of flowering and seed development, and elevated carbon levels also lead to yield losses. Productivity is also affected by floods and droughts. Therefore...

Chlorophytum borivilianum is a critically endangered plant well known for its medicinal properties for diabetes mellitus, diarrhea, arthritis, sterility, and erectile dysfunction, etc. Due to the low viability and long dormancy of seeds, in vitro regeneration is required for large-scale cultivation of this plant. In the present study, direct plant...

The production of wheat is severely affected by abiotic stresses such as cold, drought, salinity, and high temperature. Although constitutive promoters are frequently used to regulate the expression of alien genes, these may lead to undesirable side-effects in transgenic plants. Therefore, identification and characterization of an inducible promote...

Background CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technology is a DNA manipulation tool for trait improvement. This technology has been demonstrated and successfully applied to edit the genome in various species of plants. The delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 components within rigid plant cells is very crucial for high editing efficiency. Here, we insight the strengths...

The current study provides an enhanced and reproducible micropropagation system in Artemisia vulgaris L. using nodal explants of mature plants. The explants were cultured on basal Murashige and Skoog's (MS) medium augmented with 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) and Kinetin (Kin) concentrations individually. Direct regeneration of shoots (7.7 ± 0.36 shoots...

Cereal crops like rice, maize, barley, and wheat are the major staple food crops, and their nutrition and processing quality requires a dedicated long-term breeding program. However, genome editing (GE) could be a potential approach for the targeted improvement of cultivated crop plants via specifically selected alternation in their genome. Various...

Cpf1, an endonuclease of the class 2 CRISPR family, fills the gaps that were previously faced in the world of genome engineering tools, which include the TALEN, ZFN, and CRISPR/Cas9. Other simultaneously discovered nucleases were not able to carry out re-engineering at the same region due to the loss of a target site after first-time engineering. C...

Various microbes has been used in food, agricultural and other industries across the world due to their beneficiary role, fast growth and ease of genetic manipulation. . Plant microbe’s interaction may be agriculturally good or bad depending upon the species of bacteria or fungi. Different mutants have been created for plant microbe’s interaction b...

Medicinal plants have been used in herbal remedies and healthcare across world due to its secondary metabolites contents. However, low content of these important secondary metabolites and its derivatives and high demand in pharmaceutical industries needs to increase quality and productivity. CRISPR-Cas9 mediated strategy greatly improved metabolic...

Abstract Banana is one of the most economically important fruit crops worldwide. Genetic improvement in banana is a challenging task due to its parthenocarpic nature and triploid genome. Genetic modification of crops via the CRISPR/Cas9 module has emerged as a promising tool to develop important traits. In the present work, a CRISPR/Cas9-based appr...

Somatic embryogenesis receptor kinases (SERKs) play a significant role in morphogenesis, stress/defense and signal transduction. In the present study, we have identified two SERK and 11 SERK-like (SERL) genes in Phalaenopsis equestris, two SERK and 11 SERL genes in Dendrobium catenatum, and one SERK and eight SERL genes in Apostasia shenzhenica gen...

Evolutionary processes like adaptation, dispersal and genetic drift play an important role in shaping a geographical habitat of the organisms and species. To study these processes in a geographical context is fundamental for the biogeographical studies. Nevertheless, the introduction of new molecular methods allowed a stronger assessment of the ass...

Thaumatin-like protein kinases (TLPKs) are defense related proteins having antimicrobial property. Herein, we identified two TLPKs in the genome of Brachypodium distachyon and Oryza sativa, four in Hordeum vulgare and Sorghum bicolor, and 16 in Triticum aestivum. All the TLPKs were located at only one chromosome in each plant except T. aestivum, wh...

The intergenic region of Papaya leaf crumple virus (PaLCrV) transcribes the complementary (C) and virion (V) strand promoters, expressing the C1-C4 and V1-V2 genes respectively in opposite directions. Activities of the bidirectional promoter of PaLCrV in the C and V directions were compared with the 35S promoter of Cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV35S...

In this work, the green ZnO NPs were synthesized using plant leaf extract (Aloe barbadensis Mill). Their formation was validated using a number of optical spectroscopic and electron microscopic techniques. The particle size of green ZnO NPs averaged as 35 nm which was far smaller than that prepared by conventional chemical methods for comparison pu...

Biomolecules mainly carbohydrates, protein, lipids and nucleic acids are organic molecules. They are important for the survival of living cells. Some of valuable biomolecules have huge demand, which cannot be met by the extracting from their renewable resources. Microbes have been used as cell factories for their alternative production. Various str...

CRISPR-/Cas9-mediated genome editing is modernizing plant science by presenting simple, accurate and high-throughput tools for genetic engineering in various plant species. This modern technology utilizes guide RNAs, which direct Cas9 endonuclease, to generate double-stranded breaks at targeted sites of the genome, and finally plant DNA repair by e...

The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) has been reported for precise genomemodification inmany plants. In the current study,we demonstrate a successfulmutation in phytoene desaturase (RAS-PDS) of banana cv. Rasthali using the CRISPR/Cas9 system. Two PDS genes were isolated from Rast...

Plant genetic and metabolic engineering has emerged as an important area in plant science for crop improvement programmes. Efficient and stable genetic transformation is a great need for successful engineering in plants. Various significant improvements have been made for an efficient genetic transformation method in plants. However, Agrobacterium-...

An efficient genetic transformation and regeneration of transgenic plants is prerequisite for the functional characterization of gene-of-interest through CRISPR/Cas genome editing approach. Wheat is an important food crop but recalcitrant for tissue culture and transformation. Different factors affecting wheat transformation were optimised using gu...

Artemisinin and its derivatives are still one of the most effective drugs for the treatment of malaria. Artemisia pallens commonly known as Dhavanam, is an aromatic herb belonging to the family Asteraceae. Increasing the artemisinin content of A. pallens by genetic engineering would improve the availability of this much needed drug. In the present...

In-silico analysis was performed to analyse the promoters of four MIOX genes in Arabidopsis thaliana. The analyses revealed that several regulatory elements were present in upstream promoter region (1200 bp from start codon) of Arabidopsis MIOX (AtMIOX) genes. Some of regulatory elements were common while the number of elements differed in AtMIOX p...

Wheat is the second most produced staple food crop in world. Callus mediated regeneration is time consuming and laborious. Efficient regeneration system via direct multiple shoots was developed for three cultivars (Lok-1, PBW-621 and HD-2967) of Indian wheat. MS medium supplemented with N6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) and thidiazuron (TDZ) with 20 diffe...

List of primers used for the amplification of TaPSY genes. (DOCX)

Full length sequences of TaPSY1 (7DL, 7BL, and 7AL), TaPSY2 (5BS, 5DS, and 5AS), and TaPSY3 (5DL, 5AL, and 5BL) genes. (DOC)

Alignment and similarity analysis of identified TaPSY genes encoded by homoeologous sequences from A, B and D subgenomes of T. aestivum. (A) Alignment of TaPSY1 located on the long arm of group 7 chromosome. Percent identity between the sequences located on 7A:7B, 7A:7D, and 7B:7D are 97%, 94%, and 90%, respectively. (B) Alignment of TaPSY2 located...

List of primers used for the quantitative real-time PCR analysis of TaPSY genes. (DOCX)

Similarity analysis between identified TaPSY gene sequences. (DOCX)

Similarity analysis between identified TaPSY protein sequences. (DOCX)

Alignment and similarity analysis of amino acid sequences of TaPSY proteins encoded by homoeologous sequences from A, B, and D subgenomes of T. aestivum. (A) Alignment of TaPSY1 located on the long arm of group 7 chromosome. Percent identity between 7A:7B, 7A:7D, and 7B:7D are 96%, 96%, and 95%, respectively. (B) Alignment of TaPSY2 located on the...

Begomoviruses are whitefly-transmitted, single-stranded DNA viruses that infect a variety of cultivated (crop) and non-cultivated (weed) plants. The present study identified a novel begomovirus and satellites (alpha- and betasatellite) in Senna occidentalis (syn. Cassia occidentalis) showing leaf curl symptoms. The begomovirus shared a maximum sequ...

Phytoene synthase (PSY) regulates the first committed step of the carotenoid biosynthetic pathway in plants. The present work reports identification and characterization of the three PSY genes (TaPSY1, TaPSY2 and TaPSY3) in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). The TaPSY1, TaPSY2, and TaPSY3 genes consisted of three homoeologs on the long arm of group 7 ch...

Flavonoid biosynthesis is largely regulated at the transcriptional level due to the modulated expression of genes related to the phenylpropanoid pathway in plants. Although accumulation of different flavonoids has been reported in banana, a staple fruit crop, no detailed information is available on regulation of the biosynthesis in this important p...

ABSTRACT Myo-inositol oxygenase (MIOX) catalyzes the conversion of myo-inositol into D-glucuronic acid, which is subsequently utilized in cell wall and ascorbic acid biosynthesis in plants. The present study reports identification, cloning and characterization of wheat MIOX (TaMIOX). The high expression of TaMIOX was noticed in leaves and later sta...

Low phytic acid is a trait desired in cereal crops and can be achieved by manipulating the genes involved either in its biosynthesis or its transport in the vacuoles. Previously, we have demonstrated that the wheat TaABCC13 protein is a functional transporter, primarily involved in heavy metal tolerance, and a probable candidate gene to achieve low...

Gene expression is mediated through interaction between cis regulatory elements and its cognate transcription factors. Cis regulatory elements are defined as non-coding DNA sequences that provide the binding sites for transcription factors and are clustered in the upstream region of genes. ACGT cis regulatory element is one of the important cis reg...

Artemisia pallens is an important medicinal plant. In-vitro regeneration and multiplication of A. pallens have been established using attached cotyledons. Different growth regulators were considered for regeneration of multiple shoots. An average of 36 shoots per explants were obtained by culturing attached cotyledons on Murashige and Skoog’s mediu...

The homeodomain zipper family (HD-ZIP) of transcription factors is present only in plants and plays important role in the regulation of plant-specific processes. The subfamily IV of HDZ transcription factors (HD-ZIP IV) has primarily been implicated in the regulation of epidermal structure development. Though this gene family is present in all line...