Research Projects

High-throughput sequencing technologies have illuminated a new and unique class of small non-coding RNAs called tRNA-derived fragments (tRFs). Far from being random degradation from tRNA, tRFs are precisely generated fragment by endonucleolytic cleavage from mature or precursor tRNA with 8-30 nts in length. tRFs like miRNAs bound by Argonaute (AGO) proteins, regulate gene expression at transcriptional and posttranscriptional levels and play significant roles in various physiological processes and diseases (Kumar et al., 2016; Zhu et al., 2018). Agrobacterium is a natural genetic engineer with pioneer importance in plant biotechnology. The regulatory role of tRFs in virulence of Agrobacterium remains unexplored. There is no tRF data available so far in any database for Agrobacterium. In the present proposal, PIs intend to identify the tRFs of Agrobacterium employing AGO proteins. Recently, in our lab we have identified 5 novel tRF's from the terminal ends of mature t-RNAs. Based on the Gene Ontology (GO) and Clusters of Orthologous Groups of proteins (COG) analysis, these tRFs are found to play an important role in virulence of Agrobacterium. tRF's identified from the preliminary study, if further experimentally validated, could be used as a valuable tool in Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation.