Surekha Katiyar-Agarwal

• Ph.D.
• Professor at University of Delhi

Tetraspanins (TETs) are integral membrane proteins, characterized by four transmembrane domains and a unique signature motif in their large extracellular loop. They form dynamic supramolecular complexes called tetraspanin‐enriched microdomains (TEMs), through interactions with partner proteins. In plants, TETs are involved in development, reproduct...

Rice, a critical cereal crop, grapples with productivity challenges due to its inherent sensitivity to low temperatures, primarily during the seedling and booting stages. Recognizing the polygenic complexity of cold stress signaling in rice, a meta-analysis was undertaken, focusing on 20 physiological traits integral to cold tolerance. This initiat...

Pseudouridylation, the conversion of uridine (U) to pseudouridine (Ѱ), is one of the most prevalent and evolutionary conserved RNA modifications, which is catalyzed by pseudouridine synthase (PUS) enzymes. Ѱs play a crucial epitranscriptomic role by regulating attributes of cellular RNAs across diverse organisms. However, the precise biological fun...

Vascular wilt disease incited by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. carthami (Foc) in Safflower poses a significant threat to its production in India. A comprehensive understanding of the molecular underpinning of compatible and incompatible interaction is of extreme economic importance. In the present study, the genome of a virulent (IARI-5175) and a aviru...

Key message RNA modifications and editing changes constitute ‘epitranscriptome’ and are crucial in regulating the development and stress response in plants. Exploration of the epitranscriptome and associated machinery would facilitate the engineering of stress tolerance in crops. Abstract RNA editing and modifications post-transcriptionally decora...

Chalk, an undesirable grain quality trait in rice, is primarily formed due to high temperatures during the grain-filling process. Owing to the disordered starch granule structure, air spaces and low amylose content, chalky grains are easily breakable during milling thereby lowering head rice recovery and its market price. Availability of multiple Q...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2022.985402.].

Coleoptile is the small conical, short-lived, sheath-like organ that safeguards the first leaf and shoot apex in cereals. It is also the first leaf-like organ to senesce that provides nutrition to the developing shoot and is, therefore, believed to play a crucial role in seedling establishment in rice and other grasses. Though histochemical studies...

Senescence is the ultimate phase in the life cycle of leaves which is crucial for recycling of nutrients to maintain plant fitness and reproductive success. The earliest visible manifestation of leaf senescence is their yellowing, which usually commences with the breakdown of chlorophyll. The degradation process involves a gradual and highly coordi...

Black gram [Vigna mungo (L.) Hepper var. mungo] is a warm‐season legume highly prized for its protein content along with significant folate and iron proportions. To expedite the genetic enhancement of black gram, a high‐quality draft genome from the center of origin of the crop is indispensable. Here, we established a draft genome sequence of an In...

Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.), an oilseed crop, is severely affected by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. carthami (Foc), a fungus causing Fusarium wilt (FW) resulting in up to 80% yield loss. In the present study, we used a panel of 84 diverse accessions from the composite core collection to perform association mapping for FW-resistance. Hydroponics...

Northern analysis is a conventional but gold standard method for detection and quantification of gene expression changes. It not only detects the presence of a transcript but also indicates size and relative comparison of transcript abundance on a single membrane. In recent years it has been aptly adapted to validate and study the size and expressi...

Caseinolytic protease (Clp)/Hsp100 proteins are members of the AAA+ (ATPase associated with a variety of cellular activities) family of proteins present in lower life forms and plants. These proteins represent a unique chaperone system that performs the crucial role of retrieving functional proteins from the aggregated state and are thus also refer...

Limited information is available on abiotic-stress mediated alterations of the chromatin conformation influencing gene expression in plants. In order to characterize the effect of abiotic stresses on changes in chromatin conformation, we employed FAIRE-seq and DNase-seq to isolate accessible regions of chromatin from Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings...

Flag leaf is the last leaf to senesce and its life span plays a critical role in determining grain quality and yield in rice. Little is known about the molecular changes that occur and their regulation in time-dependent manner during flag leaf senescence in rice. Several studies have explored different aspects of miRNA functions in plant developmen...

Several studies related to plant-environment interactions have persistently conveyed the detrimental effects of changing environment on crop productivity. Additionally, alarming rise in population growth has necessitated substantial increase in food production to ensure global food security. World-wide, wheat is a staple dietary crop for humans. Li...

The ubiquitous small heat shock proteins (sHSPs) are well-documented to act in vitro as molecular chaperones to prevent irreversible aggregation of heat sensitive proteins. However, in vivo activities of sHSPs remain unclear. To investigate the two most abundant classes of plant cytosolic sHSPs (CI and CII), RNAi and over-expression lines were crea...

Tetraspanin family is comprised of evolutionarily conserved integral membrane proteins. The incredible ability of tetraspanins to form ‘micro domain complexes’ and their preferential targeting to membranes emphasizes their active association with signal recognition and communication with neighboring cells, thus acting as key modulators of signaling...

Low temperature is a major abiotic stress that impedes plant growth and development. Brassica juncea is an economically important oil seed crop and is sensitive to freezing stress during pod filling subsequently leading to abortion of seeds. To understand the cold stress mediated global perturbations in gene expression, whole transcriptome of B. ju...

Brassica juncea var. Varuna is an economically important oilseed crop of family Brassicaceae which is vulnerable to abiotic stresses at specific stages in its life cycle. Till date no attempts have been made to elucidate genome-wide changes in its transcriptome against high temperature or drought stress. To gain global insights into genes, transcri...

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) is the second most widely grown legume worldwide and is the most important pulse crop in the Indian subcontinent. Chickpea productivity is adversely affected by a large number of biotic and abiotic stresses. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been implicated in the regulation of plant responses to several biotic and abiotic stresses...

Productivity of wheat crop is largely dependent on its growth and development that, in turn, is mainly regulated by environmental conditions, including abiotic stress factors. miRNAs are key regulators of gene expression networks involved in diverse aspects of development and stress responses in plants. Using high-throughput sequencing of eight sma...

Micro RNAs (miRNAs) are involved in diverse biological processes including adaptive response towards abiotic stresses. To unravel small RNAs and more specifically miRNAs that can potentially regulate determinants of abiotic stress tolerance, next generation sequencing of B. juncea seedlings subjected to high temperature, high salt and drought condi...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are ubiquitous components of endogenous plant transcriptome. miRNAs are small, single-stranded and ~21 nt long RNAs which regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level and are known to play essential roles in various aspects of plant development and growth. Previously, a number of miRNAs have been identified in potat...

Northern analysis is a conventional but gold standard method for detection and quantification of gene expression changes. It not only detects the presence of a transcript but also indicates size and relative comparison of transcript abundance on a single membrane. In recent years, it has been aptly adapted to validate and study the size and express...

Small RNAs are important regulators of developmental and physiological processes in plants as well as in animals. These small noncoding RNAs have also been demonstrated to be involved in host response against various biotic stresses. Until recently, small RNA-mediated silencing was believed to have immunity against viral infection utilizing virus-d...

Apomixis is production of seeds by asexual means where the progenies preserve the maternal genotype by escaping segregation and recombination. Tapping of this agronomic trait can lead to potential increase in gross agriculture production. However, this trait is lacking in major crop species. Concurrently, efforts have also been directed towards dec...

Argonaute (AGO) proteins are critical components of RNA silencing pathways that bind small RNAs and mediate gene silencing at their target sites. We found that Arabidopsis AGO2 is highly induced by the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato (Pst). Further genetic analysis demonstrated that AGO2 functions in antibacterial immunity. One a...

Plant defense responses against pathogens are mediated by activation and repression of a large array of genes. Host endogenous small RNAs are essential in this gene expression reprogramming process. Here, we discuss recent findings on pathogen-regulated host microRNAs (miRNAs) and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and their roles in plant-microbe int...

Small RNAs, including microRNAs (miRNAs) and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), are essential regulatory molecules of many cellular processes. Arabidopsis has at least three classes of endogenous siRNAs--chromatin-associated siRNAs, trans-acting siRNAs (tasiRNAs), and natural antisense transcript (NAT)-associated siRNAs (nat-siRNAs)--all 20-25 nucleo...

SOS2, a class 3 sucrose-nonfermenting 1-related kinase, has emerged as an important mediator of salt stress response and stress signaling through its interactions with proteins involved in membrane transport and in regulation of stress responses. We have identified additional SOS2-interacting proteins that suggest a connection between SOS2 and reac...

Small RNAs have emerged as one of the most important regulators for gene expression in eukaryotes. Small RNA-mediated gene silencing has been shown to play an essential role in antiviral defense in both plant and animal systems (Li and Ding, 2005; Voinnet, 2005; Wang et al., 2006). These viral RNA-generated small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) are extra...

The adverse effects of high salt on plants include Na⁺ toxicity and hyperosmotic and oxidative stresses. The plasma membrane-localized Na⁺/H⁺ antiporter SOS1 functions in the extrusion of toxic Na⁺ from cells and is essential for plant salt tolerance. We report here that, under salt or oxidative stress, SOS1 interacts through its predicted cytoplas...

RNA interference, mediated by small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), is a conserved regulatory process that has evolved as an antiviral defense mechanism in plants and animals. It is not known whether host cells also use siRNAs as an antibacterial defense mechanism in eukaryotes. Here, we report the discovery of an endogenous siRNA, nat-siRNAATGB2, that...

The abiotic stresses of drought, salinity and freezing are linked by the fact that they all decrease the availability of water to plant cells. This decreased availability of water is quantified as a decrease in water potential. Plants resist low water potential and related stresses by modifying water uptake and loss to avoid low water potential, ac...

Rice is sensitive to high-temperature stress at almost all the stages of its growth and development. Considering the crucial role of heat shock protein 101 (Hsp101) in imparting thermotolerance to cells, we introduced Arabidopsis thaliana hsp101 (Athsp101) cDNA into the Pusa basmati 1 cultivar of rice (Oryza sativa L.) by Agrobacterium-mediated tra...

HSP100 protein is an important component of the heat-shock response in diverse organisms. Using specific primers based on cDNA sequence, rice hsp101 gene was PCR-amplified and sequenced. Southern analysis revealed that there appears to be a single gene per haploid genome coding for HSP101 protein in rice. Northern analysis showed that expression of...

Hsp100/Clp family of proteins has been characterized to appreciable details in Escherichia coli, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and other such simpler biological species. In plants, yeast Hsp104-related protein was first identified in Oryza sativa. cDNA and genomic DNA clones encoding Hsp100 have been isolated and characterized from several plant species...

The availability of effective vector systems is a prerequisite for genetic manipulation of plants through recombinant DNA technology. We report here construction of a series of binary vectors that have cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter-driven genes encoding either resistance to hygromycin or phosphinothricin for selection of the transformants,...

Arabidopsis thaliana, the first plant for which the entire genome sequence is available, was also among the first plant species from which Hsp100 proteins were characterized. The Athsp101 complementary DNA (cDNA) corresponds to the gene identification At1g74310 in the Arabidopsis genome sequence. Analysis of the genome revealed 7 additional protein...

Referee: Dr. Peter Csermely, Department of Medical Chemistry, Semmeliweis Univ. School of Medicine, P.O. Box 260, H-1444 Budapest 8, Hungary Hsp100/Clp family of proteins is ubiquitously distributed in living systems. Detailed work carried out in bacterial and yeast cells has shown that regulatory members of the Clp family (mainly ClpA, ClpB, and C...

Abiotic stresses elicit complex cellular responses. This complexity made many believe for a long time that tolerance to abiotic stresses cannot be experimentally manipulated. Fortunately, this contention has proven wrong in recent years. Considered once to be an arduous task, genetic engineering for increasing tolerance to abiotic stresses has been...

Hsp100/Clp family of proteins is ubiquitously distributed in living systems. Detailed work carried out in bacterial and yeast cells has shown that regulatory members of the Clp family (mainly ClpA, ClpB, and ClpC), together with the catalytic subunit (mainly ClpP), comprise an ATP-dependent two-component proteolytic system. Members of the Hsp100/Cl...

Plant genetic engineering took birth in the mid-eighties when, for the first time, plants were successfully engineered for improved virus, herbicide and insect resistance. This sphere has been ever-increasing since then. Abiotic stresses (such as high salt levels, low water availability leading to drought, excess water leading to flooding, high and...