Prof. Dr. C. C. GiriOsmania University Hyderabad Centre for Plant Molecular Biology (CPMB) Hyderabad - 500007, A.P. India | ||
| Email: | giriccin@yahoo.co.in ccgiri@rediffmail.com | |
A foundation on protoplast research work at CIMAP, CSIR Lab, Lucknow, India was initiated during my Ph.D. programme involving plants bearing pharmaceutically important tropane group of alkaloids. This work resulted in the development of intergeneric and interspecific somatic hybrids containing high levels of tropane alkaloids. We have carried out research work on induction of transgenic hairy roots using Agrobacterium rhizogenes for the production of pharmaceutically important secondary metabolites in vitro. The work on the induction of transgenic hairy roots in medicinally important plants namely Podophyllum hexandrum was for the production of anticancer compounds cytostatic lignans, medicinally important terpenoids in vitro from Aconitum heterophyllum and dimeric indole alkaloids from Catharanthus roseus. We are at the research activities to establish possible relationship between genome and metabolomic profiles of hairy roots by amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) of Psoralea corylifolia L. and found to contain anticancer molecules (flavonoids) e.g. daidzein. We have also worked on the somatic embryogenesis and genetic transformation studies in medicinally important tree Terminalia chebula. Our group has been successful in producing transformed callus of medicinal tree T. chebula using specialized strain of A. tumefaciens and detected tannin from the transformed tissue.
Our group has developed efficient protoplast regeneration protocol in indica rice through encapsulation of protoplasts in calcium alginate beads for the first time. This reproducible technique has now been extended to four more indica local rice cultivars for efficient plant regeneration. Currently, we are actively involved in the research on transfer of salinity tolerance from Leptochloa fusca (kallar grass) to Oryza sativa (rice) through somatic hybridization (protoplast fusion). We are carrying out studies on Agrobacterium mediated genetic transformation in indica rice to transfer selectable marker genes for their use in screening of somatic hybrids. Further, we are also involved with the research activities on bioprospecting in Andrographis paniculata using signal molecule methyl jasmonate (MJ) by elicitation of in vitro transformed cultures with an ultimate goal of isolating genes in secondary metabolite pathway using functional genomics approach.
