Mahendra Kumar Modi

Verified

Mahendra verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

Verified

Mahendra verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

• PhD in Biotechnology
• Head of Department at Assam Agricultural University

The surge in drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) strains poses formidable challenges for tuberculosis treatment, emphasizing the pressing need to explore novel therapeutic agents. Mycolic acids, essential for bacterial cell wall formation, are synthesized by two fatty acid synthase (FAS) systems: FAS–I and FAS–II. MabA, an enzyme in the...

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) being the major food crop of the northeastern region, combating floods in rice fields for higher economic yield is a major challenge. A core panel, consisting of local rice landraces that have been cultivated in the flood-prone areas of this region for years, was used for this GWAS study to uncover possible genetic resistance...

IntroductionThe North East (NE) India is rich in biodiversity and also considered as the secondary centre for origin of rice. The NE rice accessions was characterized previously using genetic markers and morphological traits. Simultaneously, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) reveal significant marker-trait associations for the drought toleranc...

Abiotic stresses are known to affect rice productivity and production world over. Developing abiotic stress-tolerant rice varieties with sustainable production is a major challenge before the rice breeders. Flooding damages the rice crop in coastal areas the world over. The present investigation was carried out to estimate genome recovery in 32 BC2...

Background In rice, drought stress at reproductive stage drastically reduces yield, which in turn hampers farmer’s efforts towards crop production. The majority of the rice varieties have resistance genes against several abiotic and biotic stresses. Therefore, the traditional landraces were studied to identify QTLs/candidate genes associated with d...

Introduction Rice is a major crop in Assam, North East (NE) India. The rice accessions belonging to NE India possess unique traits of breeder’s interest, i.e., tolerant to biotic and abiotic stresses. In the present research programme, the stress responsive genes were identified within the QTLs associated with drought tolerance. The differential ex...

Introduction North East (NE) India is the second centre for the origin of rice and is enriched with a diverse collection of traditional rice accessions. These genotypes possess unique traits of breeding interest and are rich in grain nutritional and cooking qualities. Therefore, quantitative trait loci (QTLs)/genes associated with the various quali...

Rice varieties are usually characterized by agro-morphological descriptors used for seed certification and seed characterization by following distinctiveness, uniformity, and stability (DUS) test. But in fact, these primary distinguishing morphological descriptors among rice varieties are very limited and hence face problems to distinguish germplas...

The flag leaf acts as a functional leaf in rice, Oryza sativa L., primarily supplying photosynthate to the developing grains and influencing yields to a certain extent. Drought stress damages the leaf physiology, severely affecting grain fertility. Autumn rice of northeast India is called locally as ‘ahu’ rice, and is known for its drought toleranc...

We employed an Illumina-based high-throughput metagenomics sequencing approach to unveil the rhizosphere and root endosphere microbial community associated with an organically grown Camellia population located at the Experimental Garden for Plantation Crops, Assam (India). The de novo assembled tea root endosphere metagenome contained 24,231 contig...

Background Falcipain-2 (FP-2), the major haemoglobinase of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is currently gaining clinical signifi- cance as a drug target of choice in combating malaria. But due to resistance of the malaria parasite against well-known available drugs, the chemotherapy of malaria has become more complex and challengin...

Rice is a major cereal crop of Assam, North East India. The local rice accessions grown in this region possess unique traits of breeder's choice i.e., tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. In the present investigation, 712 sali rice accessions of Assam were characterized using 20 qualitative and 13 quantitative traits. Among these, 19 qualitati...

Genetic diversity is the source of novel allelic combinations that can be efficiently utilized in any crop improvement program. To facilitate future crop improvement programs in rice, a study was designed to identify the underlying genetic variations in the Sali rice germplasms of Assam using SSR markers. The 129 SSR markers that were used in the s...

The 1-deoxy-d-xylulose-5-phosphate reductoisomerase (DXR; EC1.1.1.267), an NADPH-dependent reductase, plays a pivotal role in the methylerythritol 4-phosphate pathway (MEP), in the conversion of 1-deoxy-d-xylulose-5-phosphate (DXP) into MEP. Photochemical profiles, as well as pharmaceutical activities of Centella asiatica (L.), one of the most valu...

We employed an Illumina-based high throughput metagenomics sequencing approach to unveil the overall rhizospheric as well as endophytic microbial community associated with an organically grown Camellia population located at the Experimental Tea Garden, Assam Agricultural University, Assam (India). Quality control (i.e. adapter trimming and duplicat...

Drought stress in rainfed ecosystem significantly limits the production of Ranjit, the most predominant high yielding rice variety of Assam. In order to understand the genetic basis of drought tolerance a mapping population comprising 85 F4 individuals between ‘Ranjit’ and a drought tolerant cultivar, ARC10372 was developed and genotyped with 80 mi...

Drought stress in rainfed ecosystem significantly limits the production of Ranjit, the most predominant high yielding rice variety of Assam. The linkage map constructed showed that the marker loci were distributed across 12 chromosomes spanning a distance of 273.4 cM with an average interval of 3.41 cM between marker loci.

Forest ecosystems of Northeast India are rich in the diversity of wild mushrooms. Few reports have demonstrated the diversity of wild mushrooms from this region on the basis of their morphology. This study reports the characterization of wild mushrooms collected from different locations of Northeast India based on their molecular information of the...

The 297 winter rice accessions of Assam were genotyped by sequencing (GBS), after filtering, 50,985 high-quality SNPs were assigned to 12 chromosomes. The population genetic structure analysis revealed three major subgroups SG1, SG2 and SG3 which contained 23, 82 and 69 accessions respectively. The remaining 123 accessions were grouped as admixture...

Background: Plasmodium falciparum is the most dangerous and widespread disease-causing species of malaria. Falcipain-2 (FP2) of Plasmodium falciparum, is a potential target for antimalarial chemotherapy since it is involved in an essential cellular function such as hemoglobin degradation during the parasite’s life cycle. However, despite their cent...

Eukaryotic translation initiation factors (eIFs) are the group of regulatory proteins that are involved in the initiation of translation events. Among them, eIF4A1, a member of the DEAD-box RNA helicase family, participates in a wide spectrum of activities which include, RNA splicing, ribosome biogenesis, and RNA degradation. It is well known that...

Association of bacteria with fungi is a major area of research in infection biology, however, very few strains of bacteria have been reported that can invade and reside within fungal hyphae. Here, we report the characterization of an endofungal bacterium Serratia marcescens D1 from Mucor irregularis SS7 hyphae. Upon re-inoculation, colonization of...

Association mapping approach was applied to identify regions linked to SSR markers with yield and related traits in drought stress conditions using 267 autumn rice germplasm collection of Assam. The germplasm exhibited extensive phenotypic and genotypic diversity in both irrigated and artificial drought stress conditions. The drought screening in r...

Rice production is adversely constrained by drought especially if encountered during panicle initiation and flowering stage. Several traditional rice cultivars/landraces have inherent functioning mechanism of adaptation in diverse environmental adversities. The genetic and molecular characterization of these traditional tolerant germplasm at the om...

Association of bacteria with fungi is a major area of research in infection biology, however, very few strains of bacteria have been reported that can invade and reside within fungal hyphae. Here, we report the characterization of an endofungal bacterium Serratia marcescens D1 from Mucor irregularis SS7 hyphae. Upon re-inoculation, colonization of...

Enzymes from natural sources protect the environment via complex biological mechanisms, which aid in reductive immobilization of toxic metals including chromium. Nevertheless, progress was being made in elucidating high‐resolution crystal structures of reductases and their binding with flavin mononucleotide (FMN) to understand the underlying mechan...

Drought stress in rainfed ecosystem significantly limits the production of Ranjit, the most predominant high yielding rice variety of Assam. A mapping population comprising 85 F 4 individuals between Ranjit and a drought tolerant cultivar, ARC10372 was developed and genotyped with 80 microsatellite markers in order to understand the genetic basis o...

Poplation Structure and analysis genetic diversity of Boro Rice germplasm

The population structure of any germplasm stores a lot of genetic information. To access the genetic information we need to analyse the genetic structure of the germplasms.

Rice is one of the major food crops whose production has to be doubled to achieve the projected demand. The current yield trends are not sufficient to meet the overwhelming population and often produce poor yields because of their low resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses and limited adaptation outside their original geographical distribution....

Several isolates of Banana bunchy top virus (BBTV) have been reported worldwide. They are members of either the Pacific Indian Ocean (PIO) or the South East Asian (SEA) group. However, there is only one completely sequenced isolate published from the northeastern part of India till date. Therefore, we obtained the complete sequences of all the six...

Rice grains accumulate starch as their major storage reserve whose biosynthesis is sensitive to heat. ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (AGPase) is among the starch biosynthetic enzymes severely affected by heat stress during seed maturation. To increase the heat tolerance of the rice enzyme, we engineered two dominant AGPase subunits expressed in deve...

Differential co-expression is a cutting-edge approach to analyze gene expression data and identify both shared and divergent expression patterns. The availability of high-throughput gene expression datasets and efficient computational approaches have unfolded the opportunity to a systems level understanding of functional genomics of different stres...

The pumpkin leaf curl disease is an emerging disease of pumpkin in Assam, India. Symptomatic pumpkin leaf samples from different locations were immunologically tested using Begomovirus specific antibody. PCR with the ELISA-positive samples, using Geminivirus universal primers amplified 1.4 kb virus-specific fragments. Sequence of these amplicons sh...

RNA-seq analysis of B. megaterium exposed to pH 7.0 and pH 4.5 showed differential expression of 207 genes related to several processes. Among the 207 genes, 11 genes displayed increased transcription exclusively in pH 4.5. Exposure to pH 4.5 induced the expression of genes related to maintenance of cell integrity, pH homeostasis, alternative energ...

miRNAs are class of endogenously initiated noncoding RNAs, which are most critical in gene expression and regulation at posttranscriptional level. They do so either by cleavage of the target mRNA or by translational repression. miRNAs are being given enough attention in recent years because of its role in myriad developmental processes including tu...

Phenotypic screening during kharif 2015 and evaluation of Sub1 introgressed lines in Ranjit and Bahadur for submergence tolerance was done with the 35 genotypes. Out of 35 genotypes 32 were Sub1 introgressed BC2F3 lines (24 BC2F3 lines of the cross -Ranjit x Swarna-Sub1and 8 BC2F3 lines of the cross -Bahadur x Swarna-Sub1) with three parents i.e. R...

Haemoglobinase in the food vacuole of the trophozoite stage of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum are potent target for antimalarial drug discovery. In particular, falcipain 2(FP2), a cysteine protease, present in abundance in the food vacuole of the parasite is shown to be inhibited by a lead compound E64. We have performed Molecular Dynam...

RNAi represents an extraordinarily powerful method to silence the gene expression using synthetic plasmid or viral encoded small interfering RNAs (siRNAs). So, finding an effective siRNA against a specific mRNA from the branch of predicted sequences is found to be an intriguing challenge among the researchers till date. Although various siRNA datas...

Flooding is one of the major constraints of rice production in the rainfed lowland rice ecosystem. To cope with the frequent flooding in the climate change regime, tolerant cultivars are urgently needed to protect the paddy crop from flash floods. With the help of molecular markers, a major QTL for submergence tolerance “Sub1” was introgressed into...

Centella asiatica is an important medicinal plant and synthesizes the triterpenoid saponins via the isoprenoid pathway. The metabolic engineering approach is a promising tool to improve the key component which is limiting in many of the medicinal plants but, prior knowledge of the pathway leading to accumulation of the secondary metabolite is prere...

We have studied 5 rice accessions using 24 drought linked SSR markers to identify drought responsive QTLs along with a respective resistant check. The screening result obtained for qDTY1.1, qDTY2.3, qDTY3.1, qDTY4.1, qDTY6.2, qDTY10.1, qDTY12.1 from their related markers shows promising result for the accessions under study. Genetic diversity analy...

The traditional drought tolerant cultivar ARC 10372 was crossed with a high yielding, drought susceptible elite rice variety Ranjit for the development of advanced breeding lines under drought stress. A total of 36 F2 plants carrying tolerant parent allele for the major grain yield QTL under drought stress (qDTY1.1) were identified using SSR marker...

The traditional drought tolerant cultivar ARC 10372 was crossed with a high yielding, drought susceptible elite rice variety Ranjit for the development of advanced breeding lines under drought stress. A total of 36 F 2 plants carrying tolerant parent allele for the major grain yield QTL under drought stress (qDTY1.1) were identified using SSR marke...

iRNA has become an indispensible tool for silencing gene expression. It can act as an antiviral agent in RNAi pathway against plant diseases caused by plant viruses. However, identification of appropriate features for effective siRNA design has become a pressing issue for researchers which need to be resolved. Feature selection is a vital pre-proce...

Citronella (Cymbopogon winterianus) is one of the richest sources of high-value isoprenoid aromatic compounds used as flavour, fragrance, and therapeutic elements. These isoprenoid compounds are synthesized by 2 independent pathways: mevalonate pathway and 2-C-methyl-d-erythritol-4-phosphate pathway. Evidence suggests that 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutary...

Background: Hormone based birth control often causes various side effects. A recent study revealed that temporary infertility without changing hormone levels can be attained by inhibiting Katanin p60 ATPase-containing subunit A-like 1 protein (KATNAL1) which is critical for sperm maturation in the testes. Objective: This study aimed at attaining...

Amrit Sagar belonging to banana (Musa acuminata) genome group AAA is popularly grown in North Eastern part of India for its high yield and natural disease resistance potential. The explants were established initially on supplemented Murashige and Skoog’s (MS) mediums followed by subculturing for multiple shoot induction. Various concentrations of B...

A total of 94 polymorphic SSR markers were used for genotyping of 90 F 4 plants. Among these, 56 markers fitted for the expected Mendelian ratio of segregation whereas, 38 significantly deviated from it (P<0.01). Only 63 SSR markers could be assigned to 12 linkage groups (LGs) covering a total of 1652.3 cM of the rice genome at an average marker de...

Artificial neural network (ANN) has drawn close attention of researchers and has been successfully applied to resolve problems in bioinformatics and biomedicine. RNA interference (RNAi) has become an indispensable technology and its gene-silencing success depends on the specificity of siRNAs for a particular mRNA. The major challenge is to identify...

Background: Hepatitis B virus claims approximately 780000 human lives each year. Inadequate effectiveness and drug resistance has led to the search for more potent antivirals with minimal risk of resistance. Plant extract from Phyllanthus genus have long been used in traditional medicine as effective antiviral and hepatoprotective agents. Objective...

Advances in transcriptome sequencing provide fast, cost-effective and reliable approach to generate large expression datasets especially suitable for non-model species to identify putative genes, key pathway and regulatory mechanism. Citronella (Cymbopogon winterianus) is an aromatic medicinal grass used for anti-tumoral, antibacterial, anti-fungal...

A good quality RNA is an important prerequisite for any downstream molecular analysis. However, isolation of quality RNA from tea is difficult due to presence of high amount of phenols and polysaccharides. We describe here an efficient protocol for total RNA isolation without liquid nitrogen from apical buds and tender leaves of tea. This protocol...

Restricted Boltzmann machines (RBM) are probabilistic graphical models which are represented as stochastic neural networks. Increase in computational capacity and development of faster learning algorithms, led RBMs to become more useful for many machine learning problems. RBMs are the building blocks of many deep multilayer architectures like Deep...

variability. Prevalence of cross pollination, polyploidy and interspecific hybridization has complicated its taxonomy, making its systematic study difficult. This study investigated the morphological and biochemical variability among 18 ecotypes collected from different parts of the Assam state, India. Considerable diversity was found using all the...

Assam is one of the major rice growing states in the country and about 0.5 million ha of Sali rice growing area is chronically affected by flood and sometimes it affects more than 1 million ha. One of the most promising solutions is to develop high yielding varieties that are submergence tolerant and that are more likely to be rapidly adopted by fa...

3-Hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA reductases (HMGR) plays an important role in catalyzing the first committed step of isoprenoid biosynthesis in the mevelonic (MVA) pathway (catalyzes the conversion of HMG-CoA to MVA) in plants. The present manuscript reports the full length cDNA cloning of HMGR (CaHMGR, GenBank accession number: KJ939450.2) and its c...

The 1-deoxy-D-xylulose-5-phosphate reductoisomerase (DXR; EC1.1.1.267), an NADPH-dependent reductase, plays a pivotal role in the methylerythritol 4-phosphate pathway (MEP), in the conversion of 1-deoxy-D-xylulose-5-phosphate (DXP) into MEP. The sheath and leaf of citronella (Cymbopogon winterianus) accumulates large amount of terpenes and sesquite...

The avirulence gene avrxa5 of bacterial blight pathogen Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) recognized by the resistant rice lines having corresponding resistance (xa5) gene in a gene-for-gene manner. We used a combinatorial approach involving protein-protein docking, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, and binding free energy calculations to gain...

Abstract Centella asiatica (Gotu Kola) is a plant that grows in tropical swampy regions of the world and has important medicinal and culinary use. It is often considered as part of Ayurvedic medicine, traditional African medicine, and traditional Chinese medicine. The unavailability of genomics resources is significantly impeding its genetic improv...

Starch is the major carbohydrate reserve in plant storage tissues and can constitute up to 80% of the daily human calorific intake. ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (AGPase) is the first rate limiting enzyme of starch biosynthesis pathway and has been exploited as the target for greater starch yield in several plants. The structure-function analysis a...

Supplementary Figure S1. Ramachandran plot of both monocot and dicot AGPase small subunit. (i) Oryza sativa ssp. japonica AGPase small subunit, (ii) Hordeum vulgare AGPase small subunit, (iii) Triticum aestivum AGPase small subunit, (iv) Arabidopsis thaliana AGPase small subunit, (v) Solanum lycopersicum AGPase small subunit, (vi) Beta vulgaris AGP...

ndia, accounting for two-third of global tea production. However, the genetic diversity of tea is narrowing down because of the large-scale use of vegetatively propagated clones and massive uprooting of age-old bushes. The present study was carried out to develop DNA based marker for characterization of tea germplasms. A RAPD marker (811 base pair)...

The NADPH-dependent HC-toxin reductases (HCTR1 and 2) encoded by enzymatic class of disease resistance homologous genes (Hm1 and Hm2) protect maize by detoxifying a cyclic tetrapeptide, HC-toxin, secreted by the fungus Cochliobolus carbonum race 1(CCR1). Unlike the other classes' resistance (R) genes, HCTR-mediated disease resistance is an inimitab...

Abstract Herbal medicines and traditionally used medicinal plants present an untapped potential for novel molecular target discovery using systems science and OMICS biotechnology driven strategies. Since up to 40% of the world's poor people have no access to government health services, traditional and folk medicines are often the only therapeutics...

The endogenous small non-coding functional microRNAs (miRNAs) are short in size, range from ~21 to 24 nucleotides in length, play a pivotal role in gene expression in plants and animals by silencing genes either by destructing or blocking of translation of homologous mRNA. Although various high-throughput, time consuming and expensive techniques li...

Th e environmental constraints such as drought, fl ood, cold, high temperature, increased soil salinity and acidity severely aff ect the crop productivity including the cereal crops like rice (Oryza sativa L.), sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.), maize (Zea mays L.) barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and wheat (Triticum aestivum L. and T. turgidum L.). Over the...

Major staple crops are often deficient in some of the nutrients required in human diet. Thus, malnutrition is a major problem, especially in developing countries, where a diversified diet is not affordable for the majority. Several strategies have been adopted to improve nutrition. However, micronutrient deficiency is still widely spread. Rice is o...

Centella asiatica is an important medicinal plant with proven medicinal and therapeutic use, but unavailability of genomic resources is significantly impeding its genetic improvement. Until now no attempt has been made to develop Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs) derived Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers (eSSRs) from Centella genome. Considering th...

The theoretical three-dimensional structure of a novel δ-endotoxin Cry1Id (81 kDa) belonging to Cry1I class, toxic to many of the lepidopteran pests has been investigated through comparative modeling. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations was carried out to characterize its structural and dynamical features at 10 ns in explicit solvent using the GROM...

The endogenous small non-coding micro RNAs (miRNAs), which are typically ~21-24 nt nucleotides, play a crucial role in regulating the intrinsic normal growth of cells and development of the plants as well as in maintaining the integrity of genomes. These small non-coding RNAs function as the universal specificity factors in post-transcriptional gen...

Abstract Rice (Oryza sativa L.), a model plant belonging to the family Poaceae, is a staple food for a majority of the people worldwide. Grown in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world, this important cereal crop is under constant and serious threat from both biotic and abiotic stresses. Among the biotic threats, Xanthomonas oryzae pv. o...

Actin-1 is a ubiquitous protein belonging to the reproductive class of Actin family in Arabidopsis thaliana . This protein is involved in the formation of filaments that are major components of the cytoskeleton. Despite the importance of this protein, very little information is available regarding its structure and function in plants. In this study...

Actin-1 is a ubiquitous protein belonging to the reproductive class of Actin family in Arabidopsis thaliana . This protein is involved in the formation of filaments that are major components of the cytoskeleton. Despite the importance of this protein, very little information is available regarding its structure and function in plants. In this study...

Abiotic stresses, especially salinity and drought, are the primary causes of crop loss worldwide. The moisture availability is essential for plant growth and agricultural production. Soil moisture stress causes significant water deficits that lead to low production and ultimately result in significant economic losses worldwide. A major limitation o...

Superoxide dismutases (SODs), members of the metalloenzymes family are most effective intracellular enzymatic antioxidant in aerobic organisms. These enzymes provide the first line of defense in plants against the toxic effects of elevated levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated during various environmental stresses. The availability of h...

Tea is the most popular non-alcoholic and healthy beverage across the world. The understanding of the genetic organization and molecular biology of tea plant, which is very poorly understood at present, is required for quantum increase in productivity and efficient use of germplasm for either cultivation or breeding program. Single-pass sequencing...