Rajesh Mehrotra

Title : AtAVT6 family of amino acid transporters of Arabidopsis thaliana as target for Crop Improvement

Abstract:

Plants are exposed to several biotic and abiotic stresses, which greatly affect their growth and productivity. To meet the global food requirements, there is an urgency to develop plants that can survive under these environmental stresses with high yield and available land resources. Recent studies suggest that amino acid transporters can potentially enhance crop yield, nutrient value, and stress resistance. The function of ATVT6 amino acid transporter family in plants remains unexplored. The present study investigates the expression patterns of AtAVT6 genes in different tissues and under various abiotic stress conditions using quantitative Real-time PCR. The expression analysis demonstrated that the member AtAVT6D was significantly induced in response to phytohormone ABA and stresses like osmotic and drought. The tissue-specific expression analysis showed that AtAVT6D was strongly expressed in the siliques. Taking together these results, suggests that AtAVT6D might play a vital role in silique development and abiotic stress tolerance Additionally, transient expression studies were performed with the full-length AtAVT6D promoter and its deletion constructs to study the effect of ACGT-N₂₄-ACGT motifs on the reporter gene expression in response to abiotic stresses and ABA treatment. The fluorometric GUS analyses revealed that the promoter deletion construct-2 (Pro.C2) possessing a single copy of ACGT-N₂₄-ACGT motif directed the strongest GUS expression under all the abiotic conditions tested. These results suggest that Pro.C2 can be used as a stress-inducible promoter to drive a significant transgene expression.

1. Amino acid transporters as target for crop improvements
2. Role of ATAVT6 in stress tolerance
3. Promoter architecture of ATAVT6D

Biography:

Prof Rajesh Mehrotra is in Department of Biological Sciences at K K Birla Goa campus and also associate dean for international Programs and collaboration division. He did his PhD from National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow India and was a postdoc fellow at Kyoto University ,Japan. He has published more than sixty international peer reviewed research articles. He has handled eight research Grants. He is a recipient of Indian National Science Academy Bilateral exchange award to visit University of Edinburgh. He has visiting assignments to OIST, Japan, Louisiana state university USA