Profile
Dr Kaur specializes in the field of abiotic stress physiology for crop improvement. At NABI, her group is working in the area of plant-microbe interactions, understanding the mechanisms underlying beneficial interactions and harnessing the potential of soil microbes for crop improvement. She received her PhD degree from ICGEB, New Delhi where she delineated the role of glyoxalases in stress physiology of rice. Thereafter, she joined JNU, New Delhi as a DST-INSPIRE Faculty fellow (2015-2021). Further, she is also a recipient of DBT-Indo Australian Career Boosting Gold Fellowship (2017), which she undertook at University of Melbourne, Australia. She has been awarded with Young Scientist Award by Indian Society of Plant Physiology (2015) and INSA medal for Young Scientist (2018) by Indian National Science Academy. She was even awarded HGK-IYBA award in 2021.
Current Focus Areas
Investigating the complexity of plant-microbe interactions by evaluating factors (host genotype, microbe and environment) that shape plant microbiomes
Designing SynComs (or synthetic communities) for improving various plant traits such as, stress tolerance, nutritional content and yield.
Manipulating crops through gene editing for better response to microbial symbionts
Delineating the role of prion-like domains as stress sensors and memory regulators in plants
Selected Publications
Kaur, C., Gupta, M., Garai, S., Mishra, S. K., Chauhan, P. S., Sopory, S., ... & Pareek, A. (2022). Microbial methylglyoxal metabolism contributes towards growth promotion and stress tolerance in plants. Environmental Microbiology, 24(6), 2817-2836. https://doi.org/10.1111/1462-2920.15743
Garai, S., Singla-Pareek, S. L., Sopory, S. K., Kaur, C., & Yadav, G. (2021). Complex networks of prion-like proteins reveal cross talk between stress and memory pathways in plants. Frontiers in Plant Science, 12, 707286. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.707286
Bhowal, B., Singla-Pareek, S. L., Sopory, S. K., & Kaur, C. (2020). From methylglyoxal to pyruvate: a genome-wide study for the identification of glyoxalases and D-lactate dehydrogenases in Sorghum bicolor. BMC genomics, 21, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-020-6547-7
Kaur, C., Tripathi, A. K., Nutan, K. K., Sharma, S., Ghosh, A., Tripathi, J. K., ... & Sopory, S. K. (2017). A nuclear‐localized rice glyoxalase I enzyme, OsGLYI‐8, functions in the detoxification of methylglyoxal in the nucleus. The Plant Journal, 89(3), 565-576. https://doi.org/10.1111/tpj.13407
Mustafiz, A., Ghosh, A., Tripathi, A. K., Kaur, C., Ganguly, A. K., Bhavesh, N. S., ... & Singla‐Pareek, S. L. (2014). A unique Ni2+‐dependent and methylglyoxal‐inducible rice glyoxalase I possesses a single active site and functions in abiotic stress response. The Plant Journal, 78(6), 951-963. https://doi.org/10.1111/tpj.12521