Research Projects

Rice plays a vital role in India's food and economic security, serving as both a staple crop and a major source of income for millions of farmers. Enhancing seed quality by improving key agronomic traits such as seed size, shape, weight, vigor, viability, longevity, and nutrient content is essential for ensuring optimal utilization and productivity. However, the development of superior seeds with improved agronomic traits remains a significant challenge. These traits are often variable and governed by complex gene networks, regulated through genetic, epigenetic, and hormonal mechanisms. Additionally, they are adversely affected by the humid tropical climate in India, as well as by the rapidly changing global climate. Although considerable progress has been made in understanding seed development, the regulatory mechanisms underlying agronomically important seed traits particularly those involving post-translational modifications (PTMs) of key regulatory proteins remain largely unexplored. The Protein Arginine Methyltransferase (PRMT) gene family has recently emerged as a key regulator of plant development and stress responses. PRMTs catalyze the methylation of arginine residues on both histone and non-histone proteins, thereby influencing chromatin architecture, transcriptional regulation, RNA metabolism, and signal transduction processes that are fundamentally linked to plant growth and development. Despite their emerging significance, the roles of PRMTs in seed development and the regulation of agronomic seed traits remain poorly understood. Therefore, there is a pressing need for precise, targeted functional studies in model plants such as Arabidopsis thaliana and in crop species like rice to elucidate the potential functions of PRMTs in regulating critical seed traits. In this study, we propose to characterize seed-preferential PRMT genes in Oryza sativa, with the goal of investigating their molecular functions and regulatory mechanisms in seed development and agronomically important seed traits. Furthermore, we aim to biochemically characterize PRMT proteins by identifying their interacting partners, thereby gaining deeper insight into their functional roles and regulation during seed development and agronomically important seed traits.