Research Projects

Barley, a widely used food crop in India, faces significant challenges due to climate change. With the world population projected to reach 9 billion by 2050, food production needs to increase by 70% to support this growth. Rajasthan, which produces over 60% of India's barley, is facing urbanization and desertification as subsurface water aquifers are exhausted. If acreage committed to barley farming declines, Indian demand for imported barley will rise. To overcome this problem, genetic engineering approaches are needed to generate thermotolerant and drought-tolerant plants. This proposal uses Arabidopsis and barley to understand the function and utility of class C HSF (Hydroxyspine Chain Fracture) in plants. HSFs are central regulators of plant responses to heat and other abiotic stresses. Studies on Class B and C are limited, but HsfC1 showed significantly high expression during heat, salt, and drought stress in both barley and Arabidopsis. Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) has been known to regulate mRNA translation in response to developmental and environmental signals. The hypothesis and experimental plan involve finding subcellular localization of HsfC1, overexpressing HsfC1, knocking out HsfC1, functional characterization of HsfC1 overexpression and knock-out mutants, ChIP sequencing in overexpressing transgenic plants, and generation and expression-functional analysis of CRISPR-Cas mediated knock-out of anti-sense lncRNA of HSFC1. Stable transgenic barley plants overexpressing HsfC1 would be resistant to heat and other abiotic stresses.