Dr. Sribash Roy

Senior Principal Scientist

Research Interests

Understanding the plants response towards changing environment still remains to be the goal of the plant biologists. This has become more important considering the present and expected future climate change scenario and demand to feed the growing world population. The accelerated climate change may force plants to adapt to the changing environment. Until now, only genetic factors were considered to reveal the under lying mechanisms involved in plant adaptation. However recent advances in science and technologies opened up new dimension in the name of “epigenomes” to understand the mechanisms of plant adaptation and evolution beyond genetics. Epigenetics is the study of reversible, heritable changes in gene expression that do not involve changes to the underlying DNA sequence -a change in phenotype without a change in genotype. Recent studies have shown that rapid adaptation may be mediated through modification of DNA and histone proteins, as well as through expression of noncoding small RNAs including miRNAs. DNA methylation can alter the interactions between proteins and DNA, including transcription factors and gene regulatory regions, which affect gene expression. These in turn affects access to genetic loci. These modifications are inter-related. These enable cells with a dynamic and plastic mechanism for responding to developmental and environmental cues. This is particularly important for plants given their sessile nature. Thus deciphering such strategies in plants is the key for future crop improvement strategies and secured food supply.

Dr. Sribash Roy

Senior Principal Scientist

Research Summary

We aim to explore above strategies by studying the natural populations of Arabidopsis thaliana those are growing along the steep altitudinal gradient ranging from 600 m amsl to 3400 m amsl of the Himalayas. These populations provide us unique opportunity being naturally evolved under different climatic condition within a short geographic distance. Moreover, population level genetic studies suggest these populations are genetically different from the rest of the world populations. Based on our recent data we hypothesized that these populations might have evolved different strategies to counter different abiotic stresses they are exposed to. One of such strategies adopted is epigenetic regulation by expressing different classes of small RNA, long non-coding RNA and methylation pattern. Our results do suggest such population specific expression of these factors. Our goal is to establish the interlinking of the population specific small RNAs and DNA methylation pattern and environment driven expression of such factors governing RdDM pathway. Further, we aim to understand the trans-generational inheritance pattern of methylome and targeted methylation and demethylation of specific genes to decipher their role in plant adaptations.

Our laboratory is also working on understanding the role of population specific miRNAs and phasiRNA and their biogenesis employing gene editing and other conventional techniques. Our long term goal is to utilization of such genes or non-coding RNAs for better future crop management including higher yield.

Dr. Sribash Roy

Senior Principal Scientist

Publications

– Abhinandan Mani Tripathi, Amrita Yadav, Abhishek Ranjan & Sribash Roy Global level gene expression profiling in two contrasting flower color cultivars of Canna. Plant Physiology and Biochemisrty(2018) 127, 1–10

– Sribash Roy. Arabidopsis natural variants and the Indian scenario. Current Science (2018), 114:2

– Abhinandan Mani Tripathi^, Akanksha Singh, Rajneesh Singh, Ashwani Kumar Verma, Sribash Roy.Modulation of miRNA expression in natural populations of A. thaliana along a wide altitudinal gradient of Indian HimalayasScientific Report (2018), 10.1038/s41598-018-37465-y

– Akankhs Singh and Sribash Roy. High altitude population of Arabidopsis thaliana is more plastic and adaptive in common garden than controlled condition. BMC ecology (2017), 17:39

– Abhinandan Mani Tripathi, Amrita Yadav, Abhishek Ranjan & Sribash Roy. Global level gene expression profiling in two contrasting flower color cultivars of Canna. Plant Physiology and Biochemistry(2017), 127, 1–10

– Antariksh Tyagi, Amrita Yadav, Abhinandan Mani Tripathi & Sribash Roy. High light intensity plays a major role in emergence of population level variation in Arabidopsisthaliana along an altitudinal gradient. Scientific Report(2016), doi.10.1038/srep26160

– Sribash Roy, Abhinandan Mani Tripathi1, Amrita Yadav, Parneeta Mishra, Chandra Shekhar Nautiyal. Identification and Expression Analyses of miRNAs from Two Contrasting Flower Color Cultivars of Canna by Deep Sequencing. PloSEOne(2016),DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0147499

– Abhinandan Mani Tripathi & Amrita Yadav & Siddhartha Proteem Saikia &Sribash Roy. Global gene expression pattern in a forest tree species, Tectona grandis (Linn. f.) under limited water supply.Tree genetics and genomics (2016), doi 10.1007/s11295-017-1151-y

– Antariksh Tyagi,Shivani Singh, Parneeta Mishra, Akanksha Singh, Abhinandan Mani Tripathi, Satya Narayan Jena,Sribash Roy. Genetic analyses reveal Arabidopsis thaliana populations of West Himalaya (India) are geographically structured and distinct from the rest of the world populations AoB Plants (2015), doi:10.1093/aobpla/plv145

– Akanksha Singh, Antariksh TyagiAbhinandan Mani Tripathi, Nandita Singh, Sribash Roy. Morphological trait variations in the west Himalayan (India) populations of Arabidopsis thaliana along altitudinal gradient. Current Science(2015),vol. 108, no. 12, 25 june