Monday, March 4, 2024
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Functional Biology of Plant Microbiome
Plants have recently been identified to have a collection of wide varieties of microorganisms which collectively function as its second genome. Our research mainly focuses on the functional contribution of the associated microorganisms for the growth, disease resistance and response of plants towards other stress factors. During last few years of our study we could characterize a large number of endophytic and rhizospheric microorganisms from variety of plants through culture based, metabolomic and genome analysis methods. From the results of our study, we could demonstrate the potential of microbiome modulation as a natural method to improve agricultural productivity. Also we are interested to make use of nanotechnological methods to enhance the interaction of beneficial microorganisms with plants.
Environmental evolution of antimicrobial resistance

Our research on antimicrobial resistance focuses mainly on the environmental evolution of AMR. Here, we are interested to study the uncontrolled use of antibiotics in animal feed and its role in AMR evolution through culture based, metagenomic and whole genome sequencing based methods. At the same time, we are also studying the AMR evolution in relation to microbial biofilm for bacterial isolates collected from diverse environmental samples. Along with this, clinical management of AMR through nanotechnology based methods has also been investigated.

Antimicrobial applications of bionanocomposites
Bionanocomposites are emerging as novel and efficient materials with tunable properties which make it to have diverse applications. Our focus here is to develop bionanocomposites with antimicrobial properties as packaging material to enhance the shelf life of the food and also to reduce the post-harvest loss. Here, various natural antimicrobials have been used to develop engineered antimicrobial surface for both packaging and clinical applications.