Sanjana Kaul

University of Jammu · School of Biotechnology

Fungal endophytes are valued for biosynthesizing chemically diverse metabolic cascade with interesting biological activities. In the current investigation, two compounds were isolated from Penicillium polonicum, an endophyte of Zingiber officinale. The active moieties, glaucanic acid (1) and dihydrocompactin acid (2) were isolated from the ethyl ac...

Plants are known to synthesize a plethora of secondary metabolites viz., terpenoids, terpenes, flavonoids and alkaloids. Of these, alkaloids belong to a major class of phytoconstituents, which are responsible for many properties of therapeutic interest such as analgesic, antimicrobial, antimalarial, antipyretic, antihypertensive, cardioprotective,...

Sustainable agriculture can be considered the first step towards a sustainable world. Besides other human activities, agriculture is one of the root causes of the introduction of harmful chemicals into the environment. Therefore, one cannot imagine the existence of a sustainable world without realizing the existence of sustainable agriculture. Sust...

Plants possess a plethora of important secondary metabolites, which are unique sources of natural pigments, pharmaceutical compounds, food additives, natural pesticides, and other industrial components. The commercial significance of such metabolites/compounds has directed the research toward their production and exploration of methods for enhancem...

The origin of endophytic symbiosis dates long back in evolutionary history. Over the period of evolution, they have established a special relationship with their host plants. The research nowadays is focused on understanding the ecology, evolution and bioactive potential of endophytes. The current study is aimed to describe the biodiversity of cult...

Cannabis has been well known for centuries due to its medicinal properties. In recent decades, the inclination of researchers towards its important phytoconstituents as a potential therapeutic alternative has been propounded due to the discovery of its major active constituent, i.e., Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC). Besides this, the presence of o...

Synthesis of 14-deoxy-benzylidene-8,17-epoxy-diene-andrographolide derivatives from andrographolide and evaluation of their anticancer activities were described herein. 3,19 hydroxy groups of andrographolide were protected by benzylidene which undergo m-chloroperbenzoic acid mediated epoxydation in moderate yield to form corresponding epoxy derivat...

Leaf spot of ginger caused by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides is considered as a phytopathological constraint in the cultivation of ginger that has led to the economic loss of this valuable spice. Fungal endophytes serve as potent biocontrol agents for disease management because of their ability to colonize the same ecological niche similar to that...

Datte-Da-Talab, a subtropical temple pond of Jammu region is situated near Birpur at 32 o 39′50″ N and 74 o 57′10″ E just 17 kms from Jammu city. This pond is extensively used by number of pilgrims for drinking, bathing and various religious activities. The study was carried to analyse water for physico-chemical status for a period of one year (May...

Catalysis is a process carried out in the presence of a heterogenous catalyst for accelerating the rate of a chemical reaction. It plays a pivotal role in transition from take, make, and dispose technology to sustainable technology via chemo- and biocatalytic processes. However, chemocatalyzed reactions are usually associated with copious amounts o...

An overwhelming number of research articles have reported a strong relationship of the microbiome with cancer. Microbes have been observed more commonly in the body fluids like urine, stool, mucus of people with cancer compared to the healthy controls. The microbiota is responsible for both progression and suppression activities of various diseases...

Dynamic consortium of microbial communities (bacteria, fungi, protists, viruses, and nematodes) colonizing multiple tissue types and coevolving conclusively with the host plant is designated as a plant microbiome. The interplay between plant and its microbial mutualists supports several agronomic functions, establishing its crucial role in plant be...

The Indian Himalayan region plays an important role in providing products of great therapeutic importance to humankind. The plants thriving in the Himalayas are being used as curative agents by tribal people since ages. The unique topographic and climatic conditions of this region make it a prolific source of medicinal plants. The presence of diver...

Datura stramonium L., plant has been an exemplary source of folklore medicinal herb known for its mental stimulation and curative properties. The noteworthy pharmacological potential of this plant is utilized by Ayurvedic practitioners in the traditional system of Indian medicine. The major active principles contributing to remedying effects of thi...

Tomato is an excellent model for studying fruit development, ripening, and other secondary metabolic pathways such as carotenoid biosynthetic pathway, flavonoid pathway, and many more. Tomato fruit development and ripening occurs under tight genetic control and involves the expression of thousands of genes affecting fruit quality and accumulation o...

Background: Crocus sativus is a recalcitrant plant for genetic transformation and genetic improvement, largely due to difficulties in Agrobacterium mediated transformation and vegetative reproduction. Effective genome editing requires proficient callus production and an efficient method to deliver Cas9 and sgRNAs into the plant. Here, we demonstra...

A plant communicates within itself and with the outside world by deploying an array of agents that include several attractants by virtue of their color and smell. In this category, the contribution of 'carotenoids and apocarotenoids' is very significant. Apocarotenoids, the carotenoid-derived compounds, show wide representation among organisms. The...

Modifications at the carbohydrate moiety of neoandrographolide, isolated from the medicinal plant Andrographis paniculata, result in more potent and less toxic derivatives, namely, 4′,6′-benzylidene neoandrographolide (2b) and 4′6′-p-methoxybenzylidene neoandrographolide (2c). These showed improved cytotoxicity against SW-620, PC-3, and A549 cancer...

Poster explains the study related to effect of various phytohormones on the activity of some apocarotenoid genes and transcription factors.

Bio-active compounds, isolated from medicinal plants play a vital role in modern medicine as some of them have become very potent drugs. Although these compounds are produced and accumulated in different parts of the plants, there are many bottlenecks in getting plant-based bio-active compounds. In particular, phytocompounds are limited to a partic...

Phosphate-solubilising fungi harness the phosphate available in the soil-plant systems and make it available to the plants. They solubilise or mineralise phosphate that is present in the sparingly soluble organic and inorganic form in the soil, thereby improving growth and yield of a wide variety of crops. Various mechanisms governing the plant gro...

Carotenoids, the widespread and structurally diverse class of pigments, accumulate in the fruits of tomato plants in a tissue specific manner. The carotenoid biosynthetic pathway genes have been cloned and characterized in tomato and other plants, however, its regulation is still obscure. We collected and analyzed forty different accessions of toma...

Snow Mountain Garlic grows in the high altitudes of the Himalayas under low temperature conditions. It contains various bioactive compounds whose metabolic pathways have not been worked out at genomic level. The present work is the first report on the transcriptome sequencing of this plant. >43 million paired-end reads (301 × 2) were generated usin...

Mushrooms being considered as ‘elixir of life’ are valued for their culinary and therapeutic purpose throughout the world. They are widely appreciated as human food for centuries and represent an untapped reservoir of bioactive metabolites. This chapter gives a comprehensive overview on the diversity and indigenous knowledge of wild and cultivated...

Stress is inevitable in the life cycle of living organisms, including plants. Being sessile, plants are more prone to the deleterious effects of environmental stress. Therefore, plants have developed complex mechanisms to survive under these challenging conditions. Tolerance, avoidance, and resistance are the three major strategies followed by plan...

microRNAs represent small endogenous RNAs which are known to play a crucial role in various plant metabolic processes. Carrot being an important vegetable crop, represents one of the richest sources of carotenoids and anthocyanins. Most of the studies on microRNAs have been conducted in the aerial parts of the plants. However, carrot has the rare d...

Small RNA length distribution of unique reads. (TIF)

Identical miRNA members in each family in Orange Red and Purple Black. (TIF)

Scatter plot showing differential expression of miRNAs between Orange Red and Purple Black. (TIF)

Novel miRNA candidates in OR and PB Variant. (XLSX)

First nucleotide bias of miRNAs in (a) Orange Red (b) Purple Black. (TIF)

List of primers used for Stem-loop, qRT-PCR and RLM-RACE. (XLSX)

Heatmap showing tissue-specific expression of miRNAs. The scale represents log2 transformed normalized expression. (TIF)

Detailed protocol for the annotation of novel miRNAs. (DOCX)

In silico identification of the novel miRNA target genes in PB and OR carrot. (XLS)

Gene Ontology (GO) of miRNA targets in OR and PB. (XLSX)

B chromosomes have been reported in many eukaryotic organisms. These chromosomes occur in addition to the standard complement of a species. Bs do not pair with any of the A chromosomes and they have generally been considered to be non-essential and genetically inert. However, due to tremendous advancements in the technologies, the molecular composi...

Flavonoids are the most widespread secondary metabolites in plants, which are synthesized through the phenylpropanoid pathway. These are known to possess various types of health promoting activities. Plantago ovata, a medicinally important plant has not been explored much in terms of its antioxidant potential. In the present study, the expression p...

The dried stigmas of saffron constitute the world's costliest spice. Saffron has many therapeutic applications due to the presence of apocarotenoids. The latter are synthesized at different stages of development, and the biosynthetic pathway involves several genes encoding different enzymes. In order to understand the differential expression of var...

Bioactive natural compounds, isolated from fungal endophytes, play a promising role in the search for novel drugs. They are an inspiring source for researchers due to their enormous structural diversity and complexity. During the present study fungal endophytes were isolated from a well-known medicinal shrub, Berberis aristata DC. and were explored...

Plantago ovata is an important source of Psyllium (Isabgol), which swells upon contact with water forming mucilaginous mass, largely composed of arabinoxylans. In this study, we analyzed the expression pattern of arabinoxylan biosynthetic pathway genes at different stages of seed development in P. ovata. Besides, arabinoxylans were quantified at di...

Sustainable agriculture symbolizes accomplished utilization of natural resources while ensuring the well-being of natural environment. It integrates the goals of environmental preservation, economic growth, and socioeconomic equality. For sustainable development of the human world, sustainable agriculture is the need of the hour. The broad applicat...

The dried stigmas of Crocus sativus constitute the saffron, which is considered to be the costliest spice of the world. Saffron is valuable for its constituents, which are mainly apocarotenoids. In order to enhance the production of apocarotenoids, it is imperative to understand the regulation of apocarotenoid biosynthetic pathway. In C. sativus, a...

Isolation of CsPSY and CSUGT promoters. Amplification of CsPSYp and CsUGTp with specific primers using DraI, EcoRV, PvuII and StuI digested libraries as templates. (JPG)

Construction of genomic DNA library. DraI, EcoRV, PvuII and StuI digested and purified libraries. (JPG)

List of the primers used for study. (DOCX)

Dermatophytes are considered as the main pathogens responsible for onychomycosis, but recently successive isolations of yeast‐like fungi from the infected nails has led to consider these also as primary agents of nail infections. Trichosporon species which are non‐candidal, basidiomycetous, yeast‐like, anamorphic fungi are commonly isolated from so...

Apple (Malus × domestica) is the third important fruit in terms of production and consumption worldwide. Apple scab caused by Venturia inaequalis is the most devastating disease of apple. In the apple-growing regions, many fungicides are sprayed to control the disease leading to increase in the production cost. Development of scab-resistant cultiva...

Plants are no more considered as organisms but as complex communities harbouring diverse microbes both on its outer as well as inner surfaces and environment. Plant microbiome represents the complex microbial communities associated directly or indirectly with a plant. It can be broadly categorized into endophytic, epiphytic and rhizospheric microbi...

Pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration is a rare hereditary neurodegenerative disorder associated with nucleotide variation(s) in mitochondrial human Pantothenate kinase 2 (hPanK2) protein encoding PANK2 gene, and is characterized by symptoms of extra-pyramidal dysfunction and accumulation of non-heme iron predominantly in the basal gangl...

Phytochemical survey of the methanol extract of the dried aerial parts of Andrographis paniculata led to the isolation of major labdane diterpenes, namely 14-deoxy-11,12-didehydroandrographolide, andrographolide and neoandrographolide. Andrographolide was found to be the major phytoconstituent of the plant which was biologically active. For better...

Fungal endobiome has over the period of time evolved from being defined just as the microbes living within plants indicating not only their location but also the type of association that they have with the host. They are the organisms that live asymptomatically within the internal tissues of the plant and exhibit a variety of relationships with the...

Natural products have been a great source of pharmaceuticals since ages. Vast screening of natural products from different sources has led to the discovery of plethora of chemotherapeutic drugs and other compounds for the betterment of human life. Several bioactive entities have been generated by the structural modifications of the natural products...

Plantago lagopus is a diploid (2n = 2x =12) weed belonging to family Plantaginaceae. We reported a novel B chromosome in this species composed of 5S and 45S ribosomal DNA and other repetitive elements. In the present work, presence of B chromosome(s) was confirmed through FISH on root tip and pollen mother cells. Several experiments were done to de...

Plantagolagopus is a diploid (2n = 2x =12) weed belonging to family Plantaginaceae. We reported a novel B chromosome in this species composed of 5S and 45S ribosomal DNA and other repetitive elements. In the present work, presence of B chromosome(s) was confirmed through FISH on root tip and pollen mother cells. Several experiments were done to det...

The preparation of some novel 3-(arylideneamino)-3a,8a-dihydroxy-1,3,3a,8a-tetrahydroindeno[1,2-d]imidazole-2,8-diones 8(i-xiv) and 3-(arylideneamino)-3a,8a-dihydroxy-2-thioxo-1,3,3a,8a-tetrahydroindeno[1,2-d]imidazol-8(2H)-ones 9(i-xiv) have been reported via one-pot catalyst-free reaction of aldehydes, semicarbazide hydrochloride/thiosemicarbazid...

Saffron is considered to be the costliest spice of the world. It has been regarded as highly valued medicinal plant in Ayurveda to treat various ailments. Over the past few years, considerable interest has developed in saffron because of its anticancer, antimutagenic, antioxidant and immunomodulatory properties. Saffron's colour, bitter taste and a...

Key message: Under severe drought conditions, Brassica juncea shows differential methylation and demethylation events, such that certain epialleles are silenced and some are activated. The plant employed avoidance strategy by delaying apoptosis through the activation of several genes. Harsh environmental conditions pose serious threat to normal gr...

Synthetic food colours pose a greater threat to humans and are responsible for causing various types of cancers and cardiovascular diseases. Purple black (PB) carrot anthocyanin extract showed different colours at different pH and hence can be used as alternatives to synthetic food colours. PB carrot anthocyanins show red colour in acids and greeni...

Sehgal, S., Gupta, S., Kaul, S., Dhar, M.K. 2017. Genetic diversity among clinical isolates of Helicobacter pylori detected from India. International Journal of Medical Research Professionals. 3, 155-58.

Endophytes from medicinal plants represent a potential source of bioactive compounds. During the present investigation, fungal endophytes were isolated from turmeric (Curcuma longa), an important medicinal plant. A total of 207 endophytic fungal isolates were obtained from the rhizome of C. longa L. They were grouped into seven genera based on morp...

The importance of spacer regions in resolving the phylogenetic questions using a combination of molecular and cytological techniques illustrates the importance of spacer regions in determining the phylogeny of genus Plantago and in assigning them the name of gene relics in the pretext of evolution. 74Plantago and representative out-group tax a were...

Carotenoid biosynthetic pathway is one of the highly significant and very well elucidated secondary metabolic pathways in plants. microRNAs are the potential regulators, widely known for playing a pivotal role in the regulation of various biological as well as metabolic processes. miRNAs may assist in the metabolic engineering of the secondary meta...

Endophytes, which mostly include bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes, are the endosymbionts that reside asymptomatically in plants for at least a part of their life cycle. They have emerged as a valuable source of novel metabolites, industrially important enzymes and as stress relievers of host plant, but still many aspects of endophytic biology are...

Eight thermophilic bacterial strains were isolated from Tattapani Hot spring and screened for various hydrolytic enzymes including cellulases. The isolated bacterial strains were identified as Geobacillus thermodenitrificans IP_WH1(KP842609), Bacillus licheniformis IP_WH2(KP842610), B. aerius IP_WH3(KP842611), B. licheniformis IP_WH4(KP842612), B....

Plantago ovata, commonly called as the 'desert Indian wheat' is a cultivated and economically important plant of the genus Plantago, a large genus containing ~200 species. It yields Psyllium (Isabgol) which has several health benefits and applications in pharmaceutical, food and cosmetic industries. In view of the genetic uniformity, detection of v...