Pearlspot Seed Production, Branding and Marketing

Pearlspot Seed Production, Branding and Marketin

Pearl spot seed production through farmer collectives: a success story-Video

Pearl spot seed production through farmer collectives: a success story-Vide

Isobutanol production by Candida glabrata – A potential organism for future fuel demands

Due to global concern on the sustainability of energy from fossil fuels, isobutanol as a biofuel has urged attention in recent years due to its high octane number, higher blending capacity, low vapour pressure and higher energy content. The present study reports a novel wild strain, Candida glabrata, which produces isobutanol under submerged fermentation condition. Different process parameters have been optimized by both conventional as well as statistical methods. The production of isobutanol is enhanced in the presence of valine and this attribute the degradation pathway of valine is highly depend on isobutanol production. Under optimized condition, the yield of isobutanol is increased from 0.19 g/L to 0.96 g/L. This strain has not yet reported for the production of isobutanol

Network Biology Analyses and Dynamic Modeling of Gene Regulatory Networks under Drought Stress Reveal Major Transcriptional Regulators in <i>Arabidopsis</i>

Drought is one of the most serious abiotic stressors in the environment, restricting agricultural production by reducing plant growth, development, and productivity. To investigate such a complex and multifaceted stressor and its effects on plants, a systems biology-based approach is necessitated, entailing the generation of co-expression networks, identification of high-priority transcription factors (TFs), dynamic mathematical modeling, and computational simulations. Here, we studied a high-resolution drought transcriptome of Arabidopsis. We identified distinct temporal transcriptional signatures and demonstrated the involvement of specific biological pathways. Generation of a large-scale co-expression network followed by network centrality analyses identified 117 TFs that possess critical properties of hubs, bottlenecks, and high clustering coefficient nodes. Dynamic transcriptional regulatory modeling of integrated TF targets and transcriptome datasets uncovered major transcriptional events during the course of drought stress. Mathematical transcriptional simulations allowed us to ascertain the activation status of major TFs, as well as the transcriptional intensity and amplitude of their target genes. Finally, we validated our predictions by providing experimental evidence of gene expression under drought stress for a set of four TFs and their major target genes using qRT-PCR. Taken together, we provided a systems-level perspective on the dynamic transcriptional regulation during drought stress in Arabidopsis and uncovered numerous novel TFs that could potentially be used in future genetic crop engineering programs

A genome-wide comparative evolutionary analysis of zinc finger-BED transcription factor genes in land plants

Abstract Zinc finger (Zf)-BED proteins are a novel superfamily of transcription factors that controls numerous activities in plants including growth, development, and cellular responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. Despite their important roles in gene regulation, little is known about the specific functions of Zf-BEDs in land plants. The current study identified a total of 750 Zf-BED-encoding genes in 35 land plant species including mosses, bryophytes, lycophytes, gymnosperms, and angiosperms. The gene family size was somewhat proportional to genome size. All identified genes were categorized into 22 classes based on their specific domain architectures. Of these, class I (Zf-BED_DUF-domain_Dimer_Tnp_hAT) was the most common in the majority of the land plants. However, some classes were family-specific, while the others were species-specific, demonstrating diversity at different classification levels. In addition, several novel functional domains were also predicated including WRKY and nucleotide-binding site (NBS). Comparative genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics provided insights into the evolutionary history, duplication, divergence, gene gain and loss, species relationship, expression profiling, and structural diversity of Zf-BEDs in land plants. The comprehensive study of Zf-BEDs in Gossypium sp., (cotton) also demonstrated a clear footprint of polyploidization. Overall, this comprehensive evolutionary study of Zf-BEDs in land plants highlighted significant diversity among plant species