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Dr. Pooja Choudhary

Biography

Dr. Pooja Choudhary joined the Department of Biotechnology at the Jaypee Institute of Information Technology (JIIT), Noida, as an Assistant Professor in August 2022. Prior to her current appointment, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the RTGR – Repository of Tomato Genomics Resources at Central University of Hyderabad, where her research focused on elucidating stress physiology in small millets under diverse abiotic stress conditions using advanced omics approaches.Dr. Choudhary earned her Ph.D. in Plant Biotechnology from the DBT Institute, BRIC – National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), New Delhi, as a CSIR research fellow (CSIR JRF NET 2012). Her doctoral research investigated patho-stress responsive nuclear proteomes and storage protein-mediated cellular remodeling in rice.She completed her Master’s in Biotechnology from Pune University in 2012 and her B.Sc. in Biotechnology from K.K. Wagh College, Pune University in 2010. During her master’s program, she was awarded the Summer Research Fellowship from the Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc), Indian National Science Academy (INSA), and National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI), and conducted research as a Research Fellow at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore in 2011.Dr. Choudhary’s research contributions span stress biology in cereal and millet crops, where she has applied multi-omics strategies to understand molecular mechanisms underlying stress responses, with applications in crop improvement and climate resilience.

Research Highlights

Cereals are considered major food crops that provide essential nutrients to the human population. However, increasing threats of biotic and abiotic stress are greatly influencing crop productivity every year. This is a significant challenge to attain global food security. Developing the mechanisms of stress tolerance at the molecular level in these essential crops is of primary interest for the development of new stress-tolerant cultivars. Considering this, significant advancements have been made in omics techniques to explore the molecular processes of stress tolerance in crops. Given this, I have employed these advanced omics technologies to exploit stress signaling in crops. The research focused on the development of blast-resistant rice, where the comparative proteomics and phosphoproteomic analysis of contrasting rice cultivars identified potential candidate genes underlying the mechanisms of disease susceptibility vs. immunity in rice. Additionally, I was part of multidisciplinary collaborative projects, where I contributed to the development of an efficient and reproducible transformation method in the legume crop Cicer arietinum, to expedite functional genomics studies in these recalcitrant crops. 
Considering the ongoing issues of malnutrition, changing climate, food security, soil degradation, and increasing challenges of diet-related diseases, current cereal crops are not sufficient to overcome these problems. Hence, during my post-doctoral experience, I diverted my research towards millets, as they are considered Nutri cereals. I have contributed to transcriptomic analysis of important millet species, namely, foxtail millet and Kodo millet. My research interest involves understanding the molecular mechanisms of stress responses and nutritional aspects in millet crops.
 

Areas of Interest
  • Plant Biotechnology
  • Nutrition
  • Stress Response
  • Omics
Publications
  • P. Choudhary*, P.R. Aggarwal, P. Salvi, M. Muthamilarasan. "Molecular insight into auxin signaling and associated network modulating stress responses in rice." Plant Physiology and Biochemistry: 109452 (2024). *Corresponding Author (Impact factor 5.7)
     
  • P. R. Aggarwal, M. Muthamilarasan, P. Choudhary* Millet as a promising C4 model crop for sustainable biofuel production. Journal of Biotechnology. Volume 395, 20 November 2024, Pages 110-121 (2024). *Corresponding Author (Impact factor 3.9)
     
  • P. R. Aggarwal, M. Muthamilarasan, P. Choudhary*. "Exploring genetics and genomics trends to understand the link between secondary metabolic genes and agronomic traits in cereals under stress." Journal of Plant Physiology 154379 (2024). *Corresponding Author (Impact factor 4.1)
     
  • N. Kanika, P. Choudhary, A. Sengupta, N. Chakraborty, S. Chakraborty. "Comprehensive multi-layered analyses of genotype-dependent proteo-metabolic networks reveal organellar crosstalk and biochemical pathways regulating aroma formation in rice." Food Chemistry 459 139949 (2024): (Impact factor 9.8)
     
  • P. Choudhary P, P. R. Aggarwal, V. Mani, M. Muthamilarasan. Biotechnological interventions for improving the seed longevity in cereal crops: Progress and prospects. Critical Reviews in Biotechnology, 20;1-17 (2023). doi: 10.1080/07388551.2022.2027863. (Impact factor 7.7)