A. Mitra's Research

Dr. Mitra's research program is aimed at gaining an understanding of gene expression and molecular basis of differentiation in the plant kingdom. He has developed a convenient plant vector-transformation system based on Ti plasmid of Agrobacterium tumefaciens and electroporation. With these systems, regulatory regions of several plant genes are currently being studied. Present efforts are centered on identifying DNA sequences controlling the expression of plant genes and on nuclear protein factors that bind to these regulatory sequences. The regulatory mechanism of T-DNA genes is also being studied as simple models of plant genes. In addition, transformation systems for monocots and legumes are being developed.

Most recent publications  

• Han, J and Mitra, A. (2006) Direct Repeat Induced Gene Silencing (DRIGS) for high throughput wheat functional genomics. Plant Journal (in revision).
• Ma, C., Han, J., and Mitra, A. (2006) Direct Repeat Induce High Frequency suppression of Reporter Genes: A Potential high throughput method for functional genomics.  Plant Molecular Biology (in revision).