Research Groups
Plant Biology: Plant Transformation
Group Leader
Research Interests and DescriptionGroup Members
Vanga Siva Reddy
ICGEB LaboratoriesICGEB Campus
Aruna Asaf Ali Marg
110 067 New Delhi, INDIA
E-mail: vsreddy@icgeb.res.in
Office tel: +91-11-26741358/61, 26742360/57
Office fax: +91-11-26742316
Education
Nagarjuna University, India, BSc, 1977Institute of Advanced Studies, Meerut University, India, MSc, Specialization Botany, 1980
Bose Institute, Calcutta University, India, PhD, 1986
Career History
Since 1994, Group Leader of the Plant Transformatoin Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi, India.1988-1994, Research Scientist, ICGEB New Delhi.
1986-1988, Research Associate, Bose Institute, Calcutta, India.
Teaching Activity
Teaching activities in the ICGEB Ph.D. Programme.Scientific Activity
Main contribution to research is in the field of genetic engineering of cotton, rice, tomato, etc., to make these resistant to insect, fungal and viral pathogens. Current research mainly focuses on the development of technologies to produce transgenic cotton and rice for durable resistance against the entire cotton bollworm complex and rice yellow stem borer, respectively. Development of fungal resistant tomato and ginger based on the expression of AFP-Ca defensin is another area of major focus. Chloroplast genetic engineering has several advantages over the conventional nuclear transformation approaches in terms of high level expression of foreign proteins and containment of transgene flow. Therefore, technologies developed and the knowledge gained over the past few years in this area is being applied in the area of molecular farming.Selected publications
Nasare, K., Yadav, A., Singh, A.K., Shivasharanappa, K.B., Nerkar, Y.S., Reddy, V.S. 2007. Molecular and Symptom Analysis Reveal the Presence of New Phytoplasmas Associated with Sugarcane Grassy Shoot Disease in India. Plant Disease 91, 1413-1418Reddy, V.S. 2007. Biotechnology definition: An Indian perspective. In: Sachin Chaturvedi, Rao S.R., editors. Asian Biotechnology, Innovation and Development: Issues in Measurement and Collection of Statistics. Research and Information Systems for Developing Countries (RIS), New Delhi, 37-38
Manikandan, K., Bhardwaj, A., Gupta, N., Lokanath, N.K., Amit Ghosh, A., Reddy, V.S., Ramakumar, S. 2006. Crystal structures of native and xylosaccharide-bound alkali thermostable xylanase from an alkalophilic Bacillus sp. NG-27: Structural insights into alkalophilicity and implications for adaptation to polyextreme conditions. Protein Science 15, 1951-1960.
Pattanayak, G.K., Biswal, A.K., Reddy, V.S. Tripathy, B.C. 2005. Light-dependent regulation of chlorophyll b biosynthesis in chlorophyllide a oxygenase overexpressing tobacco plants. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 326, 466-471.
Leelavathi1, S., Sunnichan, V.G., Kumria, R., Vijaykanth, G.P., Bhatnagar, R.K., Reddy, V.S. 2004. A simple and rapid Agrobacterium-mediated transformation protocol for cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.): Embryogenic calli as a source to generate large numbers of transgenic plants. Plant Cell Rep. 22, 465-470.
Nguyen, H.T., Leelavathi, S., Reddy, V.S. 2004. Bacteriophage T7 RNA polymerase directed inducible and tissue specific overexpression of foreign genes in transgenic plants. Plant Biotechnol. J. 2, 301-310.
Vinod Kumar, S., Misquitta, R.W., Reddy, V.S., Rao, B.J., Rajam, M.V. 2004. Genetic transformation of the green alga -Chlamydomonas reindardtii by Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Plant Sci. 166, 731-738.
Kumria, R., Sunnichan, V.G., Das, D.K., Gupta, S.K., Reddy, V.S., Bhatnagar, R.K., Leelavathi, S. 2003. High frequency somatic embryoenesis and maturation into normal plants in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) through metabolic stress. Plant Cell Rep. 21, 635-639.
Leelavathi, S., Gupta, N., Maiti, S., Ghosh, A., Reddy, V.S. 2003. Overproduction of an alkali and thermostable xylanase in tobacco chloroplasts and efficient recovery of the enzyme. Mol. Breed. 11, 59-67.
Leelavathi, S., Reddy, V.S. 2003. Chloroplast expression of His-tagged GUS-fusions: A general strategy to overproduce and purify foreign proteins using transplastomic plants as bioreactors. Mol. Breed. 11, 49-58.
Pandey, G.K., Reddy, V.S., Reddy, M.K., Deswal, R., Bhattachary, A., Sopory, S.K. 2002. Transgenic tobacco expressing Entamoeba histolytica calcium binding protein exhibits enhanced growth and tolerance to salt stress. Plant Sci. 162, 41-47.
Reddy, V.S., Leelavathi, S., Selvapandian, A., Raman, R., Giovanni, F., Shukla, V., Bhatnagar, R.K. 2002. Analysis of chloroplast transformed tobacco plants with cry1Ia5 under rice psbA transcriptional elements reveal high level expression of Bt toxin without imposing yield penalty and stable inheritance of transplastome. Mol Breed. 9, 259-269.
Patents
Bacteriophage T7 RNA polymerase based transcription system for overexpression of foreign proteins in plants. 2003 (priority) Indian Patent Application No.1164/DEL/2003.
A new antifungal protein isolated from the seeds of chickpea, methods for isolation of such proteins, cloning of the encoding gene and transgenic plants incorporating such genes. 2004. Indian Patent Application No.617/DEL/2004.
High frequency plant regeneration via somatic embryogenesis in Narasimha, an elite Indian cotton cultivar and a parental line used in hybrid seed production. Indian Patent Application No./DEL/2007.
