Areas of Interest

Our group focuses on major areas of research like:

(1) Plant genetic engineering

The ever increasing population demands more from lands worldwide. The challenge of the present day is to produce more from diminishing arable land and against biotic and abiotic stresses. Our research spotlights on understanding the molecular mechanism of stress tolerance as well as the production transgenic crop plants in this regard. Investigations mainly focus on the isolation, cloning and functional validation of key genes and promoters of importance.

(2) Molecular biology of plant metabolomics

As medicinal plants have diverse array of natural phytochemicals that have complementary and overlapping chemo-preventive and immuno-protective actions it is worthwhile to look into the metabolic pathways especially phenyl propanoids. In this regard, cloning and characterization of important genes of above mentioned pathway from medicinal plants and their functional validation are investigated.

Research

1. Bioactive Compounds from the Mangrove Plants of Kerala
2. Molecular Characterization of Calcium Dependent Protein Kinase Gene Involved with Abiotic Stress
3. Molecular Characterization of Plant Type III Polyketide Synthase Involved in the Biosynthesis of Medicinally Important Phenylpropanoids
4. Isolation and characterisation of miRNA from black pepper
5. A database on Polyketide Synthases using structural bioinformatic methods (www.type3pks.in)