Dr. Amit Kumar

Bio

Dr. Amit Kumar is working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biosciences and Technology, MIT-WPU, Pune. After clearing the CSIR NET-JRF exam, he obtained his Ph.D. degree in Plant Molecular Biology from IISER Pune with Best PhD thesis gold medal award in 2020. During his PhD tenure he worked to understand how plants respond to photoperiod and change their developmental program mediated by epigenetic modifications and microRNAs with special focus on potato development pathway. Next to this, he went to Wageningen University in Netherlands to pursue his postdoctoral research focused on understanding the role of histone acetylation and methylation during heat induced haploid embryogenesis. During his postdoc tenure he also collaborated with researchers at Max Planck Institute of Plant Physiology at Potsdam Germany to study the effect of heat shock factors (HSFs) in regulating the thermomemory response in plants. Dr. Amit returned to India in 2023 upon receiving the prestigious INSPIRE faculty fellowship award sponsored by DST and started working in the department of Plant Molecular Biology at the University of Delhi South Campus. He has over ten years of research expertise in various molecular biology techniques, gene editing techniques and bioinformatics analysis of multi-omics datasets. His present area of research is aimed at understanding the genetic and epigenetic factors regulating the haploid embryogenesis and plant cell totipotency, with ultimate aim to speed up the plant breeding programs and achieve sustainable global food security.

Research Interests

Understanding the genetic and epigenetic regulation of plant haploid embryogenesis, plant totipotency and regeneration, speed breeding, photoperiod and temperature mediated regulation of plant developmental processes.

Research Papers

1. Mahajan, A. S., Kondhare, K. R., Rajabhoj, M. P., Kumar, A., Ghate, T., Ravindran, N., Habib, F., Siddappa, S. & Banerjee, A. K. (2016) Regulation, over-expression, and target gene identification of Potato Homeobox 15 (POTH15) - a class-I KNOX gene in potato. Journal of Experimental Botany DOI:10.1093/jxb/erw2059

2. Kondhare, K. R., Kumar, A., Hannapel, D. J. & Banerjee, A. K. (2018) Conservation of polypyrimidine tract binding proteins and their putative target RNAs in several storage root crops. BMC Genomics DOI:10.1186/s12864-018-4502-7

3. Kumar, A., Kondhare, K. R., Vetal, P. V. & Banerjee, A. K.(2020) Polycomb group proteins StMSI1 and StBMI1 regulate microRNA156 during aerial tuber formation in potato under short-day photoperiod. Plant Physiology, DOI:10.1104/pp.19.00416

4. Kumar A., Kondhare K. R., Malankar N. and Banerjee A. K. (2021). StE(z)2, a Polycomb group methyltransferase and deposition of H3K27me3 and H3K4me3 regulate the expression of tuberization genes in potato. Journal of Experimental Botany 2021. DOI:10.1093/jxb/eraa468

5. Kondhare, K. R#, Kumar, A.#, Patil N., Malankar N., Saha K. & Banerjee, A.K. (2021) Development of aerial and belowground tubers in potato is governed by photoperiod and epigenetic mechanism (Plant Physiology) # shared first author, https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiab409

6. John S., Apelt F., Kumar A., Bents D., Annunziata M., Fichtner F., Mueller-Roeber B., Olas J. (2024) Transcription factor HSFA7b controls ethylene signaling and meristem maintenance at the shoot apical meristem during thermomemory. Plant communications https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xplc.2023.100743

LinkedIn profile Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-amit-kumar-2a8493220/

Google Scholar Link: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=86PkuDUAAAAJ

Scopus ID Link: https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=57307629200

ORCiD ID Link: https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0000-0002-4398-4455