DEPARTMENT OF PLANT MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

Anil Grover

Professor

E-mail: anil.anilgrover@gmail.com; grover_anil@hotmail.com

Specializations: Physiology, Biochemistry, Molecular biology, Biotechnology and Genomics of Plant Abiotic Stress Responses

Research Interests Global mean surface air temperature has increased by ~0.5°C in the 20th century and is projected to increase further by 1.5 to 4.5°C in the current century. Global warming would negatively affect crop yield. My laboratory works on understanding how plants, more specifically rice (Oryza sativa L.) plants, respond to heat stress at the level of gene expression. One principal way heat affects living systems is through denaturing their proteins. ClpATPases act as molecular chaperones and help in preventing protein aggregations and disaggregating the toxic aggregates formed under stressful regimes. ClpB/Hsp100 proteins are in particular the active molecules in the context of disaggregating the toxic aggregates. This activity of ClpB/Hsp100 proteins is mediated with the help of sHsps. ClpATPase gene family is constituted of 3 ClpB, 4 ClpC and 2 ClpD proteins in rice. Three ClpB of rice include a mitochondrial protein OsClpB-M, a chloroplastic protein OsClpB-C and a cytoplasmic protein OsClpB-Cyt. OsClpB-Cyt, OsClpB-C and OsClpB-M transcripts are strongly induced upon heat shock treatment. As in yeast, rice ClpB proteins lack the motif responsible for interaction with ClpP protein. OsClpB-Cyt and OsClpB-M are able to confer partial tolerance to yeast Δhsp104 mutant. OsClpB-Cyt promoter is heat-regulated. 5'UTR of ClpB-Cyt gene appears to have a role in translation process during heat stress. Rice has 23 sHsps genes which include 16 nucleo-cytoplasmic (C) sHsps (9 subfamilies), 3 mitochondrial (M) sHsps (2 subfamilies), 2 endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-localized sHsps, 1 plastidial (P) sHsp and 1 peroxisomal (Px) sHsp having 1 subfamily each. Most of these genes are heat-regulated. From the complete genome sequence (Rice Annotation release 5), indications are that 26 genes constitute OsHsf gene family. We have interest to dissect various components that together constitute response of rice to heat alone and to heat in conjunction with salt, cold, oxidative and flooding stresses.

Awards/distinctions

• Fellow, Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc), Bangalore
• Fellow, Indian National Science Academy (INSA), New Delhi
• Fellow, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS), New Delhi
• Fellow, National Academy of Sciences (NASI), Allahabad
• Visiting Fellow, University of California, Davis, USA
• Rockefellar Post Doc Fellow and Rockefellar Career Fellow, CSIRO, Canberra, Australia
• Member, Editorial Board, Plant Science (Elsevier)
• Member, Editorial Board, Plant Physiology and Biochemistry (Elsevier)
• Guest Editor, "Current Science" issue on "Transgenic Crops" 2003 (with Prof. D. Pental)
• Guest Editor, Physiology and Molecular Biology of Plants, 2006 (with Dr. A. Sharma)
• National Bioscience Award, Dept of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India
• B.M. Birla Science Prize in Biology, B.M. Birla Science Centre, India
• Prof. Hiralal Chakravarathy Award from Indian Sci Congress Association
• Young Scientist Medal, Indian National Science Academy, Delhi
• CIDA - NSERC Research Associateship Award, Canada
• National Scholarship, Univ Grants Commission, Delhi

Selected Publications

1. Singh A, U Singh, D Mittal and A Grover. 2010. Genome-wide analysis of rice ClpB/HSP100, ClpC and ClpD genes. BMC Genomics 11: 95.
2. Sarkar NK, K Yeon-Ki and A Grover. 2009. Rice sHsp genes: genomic organization and expression profiling under stress and development. BMC Genomics, 10: 393.
3. Mittal D, S Chakraborty, A Sarkar, A Singh and A Grover. 2009. Heat shock factor gene family in rice: genomic organization and transcript expression profiling in response to high temperature,low temperature and oxidative stresses. Plant Physiology and Biochemistry (Elsevier) 47: 785-795.
4. Singh A, C Sahi and A Grover. 2009. Chymotrypsin inhibitor gene family in rice: genomic organization and evidence for the presence of a bidirectional promoter shared between two chymotrypsin inhibitor genes. Gene 428: 9-19.
5. Katiyar_Agarwal S, M Agarwal and A Grover. 2003. Heat tolerant basmati rice engineered by overexpression of hsp101 gene. Plant Molecular Biology 51: 677-686.
6. Agarwal M, C Sahi, S Katiyar-Agarwal, S Agarwal, T Young, DR Gallie, VM Sharma, K Ganesan and A Grover. 2003. Rice Hsp100 protein complements yeast hsp104 mutation by promoting disaggregation of protein granules and shows differential expression in indica and japonica rice types Plant Molecular Biology 51: 543-553.
7. Grover A. 2002. Molecular biology of stress responses. Cell Stress and Chaperones 7: 1-5.
8. Katiyar-Agarwal S, M Agarwal, D Gallie and A Grover. 2001. Search for the cellular functions of plant Hsp100/ Clp family proteins. Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences 20: 277-295.
9. Agarwal M, S Katiyar-Agarwal, C Sahi, DR Gallie and A Grover. 2001. Arabidopsis thaliana Hsp100 protein: kith and kin. Cell Stress and Chaperones 6: 219-224.
10. Pareek A, SL Singla and A Grover. 1995. Immunological evidence for accumulation of two novel 104 and 90 kDa HSPs in response to diverse stresses in rice and in response to high temperature stress in diverse plant genera. Plant Molecular Biology 29: 293-301.

 

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