Nanoparticles regulate redox metabolism in plants during abiotic stress within hormetic boundaries.

Abiotic stress management remains under scrutiny because of the unpredictable nature of climate, which undergoes abrupt alterations. Population pressure, loss of cultivable lands, environmental pollution and other anthropogenic disturbances add to the problem and grossly hinder ongoing management strategies. This has driven increasing effort to find better performing, eco-friendly and reliable alternatives that can contribute to sustainable agricultural practices to manage abiotic stress.

Molecular characterization, evolutionary and phylogenetic analyses of rice ACT/BAT-type amino acid transporters.

The Amino Acid-Polyamine-Organocation (APC) family transporters containing BAT/ACT (amino acid/choline transporters), PHS/LAT (polyamine H+-symporters) and CAT (cationic amino acid transporters) type transporters are ubiquitously reported in plants. ACT (containing BAT genes) which mediates bidirectional amino acid transport has been poorly characterized till date. In the present study, bioinformatics-based analytical studies have been performed to characterize the structural, functional, and evolutionary features of seven ACT/BAT transporters in the model crop Oryza sativa.

Identification and characterization of differentially expressed genes in the rice root following exogenous application of spermidine during salt stress.

Salinity is a major limiting factor in crop production. Exogenous spermidine (spd) effectively ameliorates salt injury, though the underlying molecular mechanism is poorly understood. We have used a suppression subtractive hybridization method to construct a cDNA library that has identified up-regulated genes from rice root under the treatment of spd and salt.

Molecular phylogenomic study and the role of exogenous spermidine in the metabolic adjustment of endogenous polyamine in two rice cultivars under salt stress.

Compelling evidences anticipated the well acclamation of involvement of exogenous and endogenous polyamines (PAs) in conferring salt tolerance in plants. Intracellular PA's anabolism and catabolism should have contributed to maintain endogenous PAs homeostasis to induce stress signal networks. In this report, the evolutionary study has been conducted to reveal the phylogenetic relationship of genes encoding enzymes of the anabolic and catabolic pathway of PAs among the five plant lineages including green algae, moss, lycophyte, dicot and monocot along with their respective exon-intron structural patterns.

Molecular phylogenetic study and expression analysis of ATP-binding cassette transporter gene family in Oryza sativa in response to salt stress.

ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter is a large gene superfamily that utilizes the energy released from ATP hydrolysis for transporting myriad of substrates across the biological membranes. Although many investigations have been done on the structural and functional analysis of the ABC transporters in Oryza sativa, much less is known about molecular phylogenetic and global expression pattern of the complete ABC family in rice. In this study, we have carried out a comprehensive phylogenetic analysis constructing neighbor-joining and maximum-likelihood trees based on various statistical methods of different ABC protein subfamily of five plant lineages including Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (green algae), Physcomitrella patens (moss), Selaginella moellendorffii (lycophyte), Arabidopsis thaliana (dicot) and O.

Human GMDS gene fragment hypermethylation in chronic high level of arsenic exposure with and without arsenic induced cancer.

Arsenic, though a poor mutagen, is an accepted environmental carcinogen. Perturbation of DNA methylation pattern leading to aberrant gene expression has been hypothesized as the mechanism for arsenic induced carcinogenesis. We had earlier demonstrated the hypermethylation of promoter region of p53 and p16 genes in persons exposed to different doses of arsenic.

Genome-wide analysis and evolutionary study of sucrose non-fermenting 1-related protein kinase 2 (SnRK2) gene family members in Arabidopsis and Oryza.

The over-expression of plant specific SnRK2 gene family members by hyperosmotic stress and some by abscisic acid is well established. In this report, we have analyzed the evolution of SnRK2 gene family in different plant lineages including green algae, moss, lycophyte, dicot and monocot. Our results provide some evidences to indicate that the natural selection pressure had considerable influence on cis-regulatory promoter region and coding region of SnRK2 members in Arabidopsis and Oryza independently through time.

In silico characterization and evolutionary analyses of CCAAT binding proteins in the lycophyte plant Selaginella moellendorffii genome: a growing comparative genomics resource.

NF-Y transcription factors encoded by HAP gene family, composed of three subunits (HAP2/NF-YA, HAP3/NF-YB and HAP5/NF-YC), are capable of transcriptional regulation of target genes with high specificity by binding to the CCAAT-containing promoter sequences. Here, we have characterized duplicated HAP genes in Selaginella moellendorffii and explored some features that might be involved in the regulation of gene expression and their function. Subsequently, the evolutionary relationships of LEC1-type of HAP3 genes have been studied starting from lycophytes to angiosperm to reveal the details of conservation and diversification of these genes during plant evolution.