Prof. Maitrayee DasGupta
Dept. of Biochemistry
University of Calcutta, India

maitrayee_d@hotmail.com
website: Maitrayee DasGupta

Aeschynomene/dalbergeae legumes account for 25% of the legume genera where rhizobial invasion bypass the epidermal infection threads and instead are directly endocytosed by a cortical cell. Since these legumes do away with the complex epidermal events they are believed to be adapted to minimal symbiotic processes.The objective of our lab is to investigate the root nodule symbiosis in a crack entry supported dalbergoid legume Arachis hypogeae to decipher the minimal form ofsymbiosis response  pathway. We focus on understanding the phosphorylation cascade that originates from the Receptor Kinases like NFR1-NFR5, SymRK and LHKs. This work is supported by the Centre of Excellence and Innovation in Biotechnology,Department of Biotechnology, India . We have developed a transcriptome for the Bradyrhizobium-Arachis interaction in collaboration with Dr.Pierre Czernic and Dr.Fabienne Cartieaux of LSTM, France.

Recently we have shown Arachis to undertake both Nod-dependent and Nod-independent symbiosis which is the foundation of our work plan in the IUNFC program. In this project we wish to do a comparative genomics and transcriptomics of the Nod-containing and the Nod- deficient Bradyrhizobium to understand the minimal framework in the rhizobia-legume interaction.