Debasis Chakrabarty

National Botanical Research Institute - India | NBRI · Genetics & Molecular Biology Division

Recent studies have identified rice (Oryza sativa) as a major dietary source of inorganic arsenic (As) and poses a significant human health risk. The predominant model for plant detoxification of heavy metals is complexation of heavy metals with phytochelatins (PCs), synthesized non-translationally by PC synthase (PCS) and compartmentalized in vacu...

Elevated arsenic in environment and agricultural soil is a serious concern to crop production and human health. Among the different detoxification mechanism, methylation of arsenic is a widespread phenomenon in nature. A number of microorganisms are able to methylate arsenic but less is known in fungi. Here, we identified a novel arsenic methyltran...

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) grown on arsenic-containing soil and water become a primary dietary source of arsenic and pose a significant health risk. Gene modification is an important and practical approach to reduce arsenic accumulation in rice grains. Here, we reported a WaarsM gene of soil fungus Westerdykella aurantiaca, expressed in rice able to co...

ClassIII peroxidases are multigene family of plant-specific peroxidase enzyme. They are involved in various physiological and developmental processes like auxin catabolism, cell metabolism, various biotic, abiotic stresses and cell elongation. In the present study, we identified a class III peroxidase (OsPRX38) from rice which is upregulated severa...

Arsenic (As), classified as a "Metalloid" element, is well known for its carcinogenicity and other toxic effects to human. Arsenic exposure in plants results in alteration of physiochemical and biological properties, consequently loss of crop yield. Being a staple food for half of the world’s population, subsequent consumption of As-contaminated ri...

Arsenic (As) contamination of agricultural soil has become a major concern due to its adverse effects on plant growth and human health. Selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs), a novel selenium (Se) source, are characterised by their exceptional biocompatibility, degradability, and bioactivities. In the present study, SeNPs were biogenically synthesised and...

This study focused on conservation and large-scale propagation of Begonia dipetala var. hydrophila (C.B. Clarke) Santhosh & Seema through a micropropagation system. An optimized protocol for aseptic seed germination was established using varying concentrations (0.5, 2.5, 5.0, 7.5, and 10.0 µM) of gibberellic acid (GA3), coupled with different incub...

Hoya is a wild ornamental plant with medicinal properties that have been extensively exploited from its natural habitat, causing a reduction at an alarming rate. The current study is aiming to fabricate an affordable and simple-to-use hydroponic system for the conservation and mass production of four Hoya species (H. carnosa, H. kerrii, H. parasiti...

Neurodegenerative diseases include Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, schizophrenia and depression. Decreased motor control, deficit cognitive function and mood disorders have developed due to these neurodegenerative diseases in an enormous amount of people worldwide. Potential causes for these diseases includ...

Trichomes are specialised epidermal outgrowth that is present on the aerial parts of plants. On the basis of morphological and cellular variation, they are categorized into non-glandular trichomes (NGTs) and glandular trichomes (GTs). NGTs are known to be involved in the protective and defensive roles that attribute to provide structural and chemic...

This study addresses the pressing issue of high arsenic (As) contaminations, which poses a severe threat to various life forms in our ecosystem. Despite this prevailing concern, all organisms have developed some techniques to mitigate the toxic effects of As. Certain plants, such as bryophytes, the earliest land plants, exhibit remarkable tolerance...

ट्राइकोम, विभिन्न प्रकार के काँटों जैसे थॉर्न, स्पाइन अथवा प्रिकल्स से भिन्न संरचना होती है। थॉर्न एक प्रकार के नुकीले परिवर्तित तने को कहा जाता है अपितु उपांतरित पत्तियों की नुकीली संरचना को स्पाइन नाम से जाना जाता है। इन सबसे भिन्न संरचना को प्रिकल्स कहा जाता है जो की नुकीले तो होते हैं परन्तु मूल रूप से पौधों के अधिचर्म (एपिडर्मिस) से विकसित होत...

Tinospora cordifolia (Family Menispermaceae), commonly known as “Guduchi,” is an extensively used medicinal plant in modern as well as traditional Ayurvedic systems of medicine. The constitutive occurrence of various bioactive constituents such as terpenes, alkaloids, glycosides, aliphatic compounds, and flavonoids attributes to its inexplicable ef...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s12298-023-01315-7.].

Metallothioneins (MTs) are cysteine-rich proteins known for their strong metal-binding capabilities, making them effective in detoxifying heavy metals (HMs). This study focuses on characterizing the functional properties of OsMT-I-Id, a type-I Metallothionein found in rice. Using a HM-responsive yeast cup1Δ (DTY4), ycf1∆ (for cadmium), and acr3∆ mu...

Unlabelled: Vetiver [Vetiveria zizanioides (L.) Roberty] is a perennial C-4 grass traditionally valued for its aromatic roots/root essential oil. Owing to its deep penetrating web-forming roots, the grass is now widely used across the globe for phytoremediation and the conservation of soil and water. This study has used the transcriptome data of v...

Abstract Hoya is a wild ornamental plant with medicinal properties that have been extensively exploited from its natural habitat, causing a reduction at an alarming rate. The current study is aiming to fabricate an affordable and simple-to-use hydroponic system for the conservation and mass production of four Hoya species (H. carnosa, H. kerrii, H....

In the present scenario, remediation of heavy metals (HMs) contaminated soil has become an important work to be done for the well-being of human and their environment. Phytoremediation can be regarded as an excellent method in environmental technologies. The present contemporary research explores the Solanum viarum Dunal function as a potential acc...

Various environmental factors like drought, heavy metal toxicity, salinity, extreme temperature, and pathogen infection create oxidative stress in plants via the generation of excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS). Oxidative stress has disastrous effects on normal plant growth and development and results in damage of proteins, nucleic acids, lipi...

Arsenic (As) is an acute toxic metalloid that affects plant growth and development. The higher bioavailability and carcinogenic property of As make them a global health hazard. The most commonly occurring environmental forms of toxic As are inorganic As named as arsenate (AsV) and arsenite (AsIII). Arsenic enters the food chain through the consumpt...

Solanum viarum serves as a raw material for the steroidal drug industry due to its alkaloid and glycoalkaloid content. Elicitation is well-known for measuring the increase in the yield of bioactive compounds in in vitro cultures. The current study was performed for the accumulation of metabolites viz. solasodine, solanidine, and α-solanine in S. vi...

Main conclusion: Plant responds to Agrobacterium via three-layered immunity that determines its susceptibility or resistance to Agrobacterium infection. Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a soil-borne Gram-negative bacterium that causes crown gall disease in plants. The remarkable feat of interkingdom gene transfer has been extensively utilised in plant...

Rice (Oryza sativa L.), being a paddy crop, is particularly susceptible to drought, reducing its yield drastically. Abscisic acid stress-ripening proteins (Asr) are a family of plant-specific ABA-induced low molecular weight hydrophilic proteins encoded by the stress-regulated gene. This work substantiates the biological role of rice Asr6 against d...

The present article represents the data for analysis of microbial consortium (P.putida+C.vulgaris) mediated amelioration of arsenic toxicity in rice plant. In the current study the transcriptome profiling of treated rice root and shoot was performed by illumina sequencing (Platform 2000). To process the reads and to analyse differential gene expres...

Drought stress, an inevitable factor due to global climate change, hampers plant biomass production and overall yield. Drought mediated stress sensitivity exerts multi-dimensional effect on transcriptional and proteomic variations leading to changes in morphological, physiological, metabolic and hormonal responses. To cope up water scarcity, plants...

Key message OsGSTU5 interacts and glutathionylates the VirE2 protein of Agrobacterium and its (OsGSTU5) overexpression and downregulation showed a low and high AMT efficiency in rice, respectively. Abstract During Agrobacterium-mediated transformation (AMT), T-DNA along with several virulence proteins such as VirD2, VirE2, VirE3, VirD5, and VirF e...

Arsenic (As) is an environmental contaminant food chain toxin and negatively affects both plants and animals. Plants modulate the genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic responses to alleviate the As stress. There could be species-dependent variation in the key components of omic responses to As stress, or it may be common to other metal(loid) stresses...

the Bacillus amyloliquefaciens-SN13 and model crop rice (Oryza sativa) were chosen to understand the complex regulatory networks that govern plant-PGPR interaction under salt stress. During stress, inoculation with SN13 significantly increased biomass, relative water content, proline and total soluble sugar in rice while decreased lipid peroxidatio...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are one of the most critical epigenetic regulators of gene expression which modulate a spectrum of development and defence response processes in plants. Chromium (Cr) contamination in rice imposes a serious concern to human health as rice is used as staple food throughout the world. Although several studies have established the d...

Arsenic (As) contamination in rice leads to yield decline and causes carcinogenic risk to human health. Although the role of nitric oxide (NO) in reducing As toxicity is known, NO-mediated genetic modulation in the plant during arsenic toxicity has not yet been established. We analyzed the key components of NO metabolism and the correlations betwee...

The adverse effects of arsenic (As) contamination are well known. Rice is a staple food for 50% of the world population but the accumulation of As into rice hampers the food security and safety. Thus the amelioration of As stress and reduction of As levels in rice are needed. In this study, transcriptome (Illumina sequencing) and proteome (2D gel e...

Arsenic (As) considered as one of the hazardous metalloid that hampers various physiological activities in rice. To study the mechanism of As tolerance in rice one differentially expressed tau class glutathione-S-transferase (OsGSTU5) has been selected and generated transgenic rice plants with knockdown (KD) and overexpressing OsGST5 (OE) lines. Ou...

Rice is a staple crop, and food chain contamination of arsenic in rice grain possesses a serious health risk to billions of population. Arsenic stress negatively affects the rice growth, yield and quality of the grains. Nitric oxide (NO) is a major signaling molecule that may trigger various cellular responses in plants. The protective role of NO d...

The medicinal plant, Solanum viarum Dunal includes a number of compounds with important pharmacological effects. The effect of temperature (heat and cold) stress on growth, secondary metabolite levels and defense mechanism in two genotypes (prickled and prickleless) of S. viarum was evaluated. The two thermal regimes (4°C for cold and 35°C for heat...

The present study demonstrates the Ni toxicity-ameliorating and growth-promoting abilities of two different bacterial isolates when applied to wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) as the host plant. Two bacterial strains tolerant to Ni stress were isolated from wheat seeds and selected based on their ability to improve the germination of wheat plants; they...

Plants being sessile organisms are exposed to innumerable abiotic and biotic stresses on a daily basis. Heavy metal toxicity in plants results in hampered root growth and defect in root structure, oxidative stress as well as overall loss of yield. Heavy metals generally fall in two groups; essential heavy metals (Cu, Fe, Zn, and Mn) playing a vital...

Nickel (Ni) is an essential element for plant growth and is a constituent of several metalloenzymes, such as urease, Ni-Fe hydrogenase, Ni-superoxide dismutase. However, in high concentrations, Ni is toxic and hazardous to plants, humans and animals. High levels of Ni inhibit plant germination, reduce chlorophyll content, and cause osmotic imbalanc...

One of the most interesting signaling molecules that regulates a wide array of adaptive stress responses in plants are the micro RNAs (miRNAs) that are a unique class of non-coding RNAs constituting novel mechanisms of post-transcriptional gene regulation. Recent studies revealed the role of miRNAs in several biotic and abiotic stresses by regulati...

Solanum viarum Dunal, is an important medicinal plant widely used as a source of raw material for the steroidal drug industry. Out of various steroidal precursors, solasodine, an analogue of diosgenin is the most important source of raw material for the synthesis of steroidal drugs. In the present study, growth and phytochemical variations in diffe...

Plant-derived medicinal compounds are rich sources of bioactive compounds used for health benefits and have a long history, which formed the basis for the evolution of many modern medicines. These medicinal compounds comprise various groups of secondary metabolites, having antimicrobial activity, exist in healthy plants, and activated in response t...

The basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) is the second largest TF family in plants that play important roles in plant growth, development, and stress responses. In this study, a total of 100 bHLHs were identified using Hidden Markov Model profiles in the Nicotiana tabacum genome, clustered into 15 major groups (I-XV) based on their conserved domains and p...

Zinc (Zn) is a vital micronutrient in both plants and humans for healthy growth and development. The lesser Zn accessibility causes about 20% yield loss along with low Zn content in grains. About 30% of the human population in the world rely on Zn deficient diets. Dietry Zn deficiency causes impairment of physical growth, immune system functioning,...

The objective of this work was to study the potential of a constructed bacterial consortium (comprising strains of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, Bacillus cereus, and Bacillus anthracis) to treat distillery wastewater via the bioaugmentation process. The discharged wastewater showed elevated total ammonium nitrogen(195.0 ± 1.24 mg L⁻¹), total dissol...

Biomass energy has potential to replace the traditional sources of energy and by this way it can strengthen the economy and creates a pollution free environment. It can change the direction towards energy production and consumption, provides a sustainable energy system. Biomass based energy also deals and resolves another critical issue of our coun...

Extensive industrial activities resulted in an increase in chromium (Cr) contamination in the environment. The toxicity of Cr severely affects plant growth and development. Cr is also recognized as a human carcinogen that enters the human body via inhalation or by consuming Cr-contaminated food products. Taking consideration of Cr enrichment in the...

In this era of increasing population, there is a high need to produce plants that are equipped with high crop yield and biotic/abiotic stress tolerance. To acquire these properties, plants have evolved various mechanisms to prevent disruption of protein homeostasis by maintaining protein to be functional in their native form. Heat shock proteins (H...

During Agrobacterium-mediated transformation (AMT), T-DNA along with several virulence proteins like VirD2, VirE2, VirE3, VirD5, and VirF enter into the plant cytoplasm. VirE2 is supposed to serve as single-stranded DNA binding (SSB) protein and assist the cytoplasmic trafficking of T-DNA inside the host cell. In the present study, a rice glutathio...

Soil salinity is one of the critical issue worldwide that adversely affect soil fertility.. Salt stress significantly limits crop yield and grain quality; therefore, there is an urgent need to develop a strategy to improve salt stress tolerance. In present study, we reported that rice glutaredoxin (OsGrx_C7) plays a positive response in salt induce...

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are longer than 200 bp and belong to a class of noncoding RNAs transcripts, lacking protein-coding capacity. They have essential roles in various biological processes like transcriptional, posttranscriptional, genomic imprinting, and epigenetic levels. The function and involvement of lncRNAs in plants are not much expl...

Solanum is one of the largest genera of the family Solanaceae comprising > 2000 species distributed mostly in the tropical and subtropical regions of Australia, Africa, and some parts of Asia, such as China, India, and Japan. The nutraceutical and pharmaceutical values of the Solanum species are due to the presence of bioactive phyto-constituents s...

Dehydrins are a multifunctional and diverse class of proteins that are crucial in combating abiotic stresses imposed on the plant kingdom. Plants use dehydrin to stabilize biomolecules and membranes; therefore, dehydrins are key during dehydration stress. For almost 30 years, dehydrins have been known to be chaperones that enable ion-binding functi...

Drought is the major abiotic factors that limit crop productivity worldwide. To withstand stress conditions, plants alter numerous mechanisms for adaption and tolerance. Therefore, in the present study, 106 rice varieties were screened for drought tolerance phenotype via exposing different concentrations of polyethylene glycol 6000 (PEG) in the hyd...

Excessive levels of heavy metals (HMs) in agricultural soil is a critical concerns for crop production and food safety and pose potential hazards to human and animal health. Anthropogenic sources including agriculture, mining, smelting, electroplating, and other industrial activities have resulted in the deposition of undesirable concentration of m...

The basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) superfamily is the second largest transcription factor family in plants that act as homo or hetero dimers to regulate the expression of their target genes. bHLH genes have a significant role in plant development and several stress responses. A total of hundred bHLHs was identified and all the identified Nicotiana t...

Agronomically important crops like rice are highly affected by environmental stresses. Drought and salinity stress are the two dominant forms of abiotic stress which deteriorate crop yield and productivity. Despite the superior varieties and tremendous research in improving technologies, rice productivity has become static in the last few decades....

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a widely cultivated staple food crop feeds half of the world’s population. However, rice accumulates higher amount of heavy metals like arsenic and serves as a prominent source of arsenic exposure to humans. Arsenic is a pervasive metalloid, and its contamination in soil and water has been reported globally. In an aerobic...

Class III peroxidases are secretory enzymes which belong to a ubiquitous multigene family in higher plants and have been identified to play role in a broad range of physiological and developmental processes. Potentially, it is involved in generation and detoxification of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), and their subcellular localization reflects through...

ABSTRACT Drought is the major abiotic factors that limit crop productivity worldwide. To withstand stress conditions, plants alter numerous mechanisms for adaption and tolerance. Therefore, in the present study, 106 rice varieties were screened for drought tolerance phenotype via exposing different concentrations of polyethylene glycol 6000 (PEG)...

Methyl jasmonate (Me-JA) is a plant growth regulator known for modulating plant responses to various abiotic and biotic stresses. The unavoidable arsenic (As) contamination in rice (Oryza sativa) results in reduced crop yield and greater carcinogenic risk to humans. The present work examines the significance of Me-JA induced molecular signaling and...

Arsenic (As) which is a heavy metal is ubiquitously present in soil as well as in water. As has been ranked as a potent carcinogen and is found to be very harmful to all the living beings ranging from bacteria to plant to animals as well as humans. All the organisms possess various defense mechanisms to combat such types of stresses. However, if it...

Rice is the most consumed food crop and essential determinant in global food security program. Currently, arsenic (As) accumulation in rice is a critical concern in terms of both crop productivity and grain quality; therefore, it is an urgent need to reduce As accumulation. Here, we selected a glutaredoxin (OsGrx_C7) gene that plays an essential ro...

Nitric oxide (NO) is a gaseous molecule, actively participating in regulation of various metabolic and physiological processes in plants under environmental stress conditions. Interestingly, the discovery and categorization of NO biosynthesis gene, nitric oxide synthase, is still controversial in plants. However, in recent few years, using a transg...

The MYB TF family is an immensely large and functionally diverse class of proteins involved in the regulation of cell cycle, cell morphogenesis to stress signaling mechanism. The present study deciphered the hormonal cross-talk of wound inducible and stress-responsive OsMYB-R1 transcription factor in combating abiotic [Cr(VI) and drought/PEG] as we...

Glutathione-S-transferase (GST) is an important defense gene that confers resistance against several abiotic and biotic stresses. The present study identifies a tau class GST in rice (Oryza sativa L.), OsGSTU5 (Os09g20220), which provided tolerance against sheath blight (SB) disease, caused by a necrotrophic fungus, Rhizoctonia solani (RS). Overexp...

Arsenic (As), a chronic poison and non-threshold carcinogen, is a food chain contaminant in rice, posing yield losses as well as serious health risks. Selenium (Se), a trace element, is a known antagonist of As toxicity. In present study, RNA seq. and proteome profiling, along with morphological analyses were performed to explore molecular cross-ta...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are one of the most critical epigenetic regulators of gene expression which modulate a spectrum of development and defence response processes in plants. Chromium (Cr) contamination in rice imposes a serious concern to human health as rice is used as staple food throughout the world. Although several studies have established the d...

Among various abiotic stresses, water deficit hit the first in the list followed by heavy metal stresses as a serious environmental growth-limiting factor that restricts the global crop yield. Molecular approaches will help us to trace key regulators which are involved in stress-related phenomenon to enhance crop productivity. The present study fun...

The Bacillus amyloliquefaciens-SN13 and model crop rice (Oryza sativa) were chosen to understand the complex regulatory networks that govern plant-PGPR interaction under salt stress. During stress, inoculation with SN13 significantly increased biomass, relative water content, proline and total soluble sugar in rice while decreased lipid peroxidatio...

Plants being sessile organism have evolved mechanisms that help them survive, adapt, or tolerate drought stress. During drought stress enhanced reactive oxygen species (ROS) production is inevitable; the phytotoxic levels of ROS are detrimental leading to cellular damage and death. However, at low concentration, they act as key signaling molecule b...

Recent research indicates that a small, positive difference is maintained by cells between the ROS produced and scavenged. This small quantity of ROS “permitted” to exist, serves as a quantitative indicator of the status of the electron transport system that generated them (Foyer and Noctor 2005b). There is substantial evidence now that ROS levels...

Plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) improve plant growth by altering the root architecture, although the mechanisms underlying this alteration have yet to be unravelled. Through microarray analysis of PGPR-treated rice roots, a large number of differentially regulated genes were identified. Ectopic expression of one of these genes, OsASR6 (...

Arsenic is listed as the most extensive environmental carcinogens. The present report demonstrated that yeast expressing WaarsM gene encoding arsenic methyltransferase from soil fungus Westerdykella aurantiaca removes arsenic from contaminated soil. We investigated the potential use of yeast as a plant growth-promoting agent to stimulate rice plant...

Drought, one of the most serious abiotic stresses, adversely affects the growth, development, and yield of crop plants. It poses a risk to food security and health of the population. Drought stress induces an oxidative environment in cells, which disrupts the function of proteins and causes cell damage. Therefore, we highlighted the function of osm...