Bikash completed his master’s degree at the department of botany, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, in 2017. His thesis, titled “In silico study of (6-4) photolyase of cyanobacterium Gloeobacter kilaueensis” was conducted under the guidance of Dr. Sailendra Pratap Singh. He then moved to the National Institute of Plant Genome Research, New Delhi, India, where he finalized his PhD thesis under the supervision of Dr. Senjuti Sinharoy in 2023. During his doctoral research, Bikash worked with the Peanut (Arachis hypogaea) – Bradyrhizobia symbiotic interaction, the “crack entry” system. He investigated a novel group of proteins expressed in peanut root nodules, belonging to the Cysteine-rich secretory proteins, Antigen 5, and Pathogenesis-related 1 (CAP) superfamily. His work identified their pivotal role in the terminal differentiation of rhizobia within peanut nodule cells, potentially facilitating the differentiation process through interactions with bacterial membrane lipids.
In January 2024, Bikash joined our team as a postdoctoral fellow. His research will concentrate on identifying and characterizing factors that regulate infection and intracellular accommodation during root nodule symbiosis.
PUBLICATIONS
Bhattacharjee O, Raul B, Ghosh A, Bhardwaj A, Bandyopadhyay K, & Sinharoy S (2022).
Nodule INception‐independent epidermal events lead to bacterial entry during nodule development in peanut (Arachis hypogaea).
New Phytologist; 236(6): 2265-2281
Raul B, Bhattacharjee O, Ghosh A, Upadhyay P, Tembhare K, Singh A, … & Sinharoy S (2022).
Microscopic and transcriptomic analyses of Dalbergoid legume peanut reveal a divergent evolution leading to nod-factor-dependent epidermal crack-entry and terminal bacteroid differentiation.
Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions; 35(2): 131-145.
Raul B, & Sinharoy S (2022).
An improvised hairy root transformation method for efficient gene silencing in roots and nodules of Arachis hypogaea.
Plant Gene Silencing: Methods and Protocols, Springer US; (pp. 303-316)
Raul B, Bhattacharjee O, Tembhare K, Khanna T, Shaheen T, Sinharoy S, & Bandyopadhyay K (2021).
Genome-wide identification of auxin response factors (ARFs) in three different species of Arachis.
Plant Biotechnology Reports; 15(2): 229-239.
Shaheen T, Tembhare K, Singh A, Raul B, Ghosh A K, Torres-Jerez I, … & Sinharoy S (2021).
AhNGE: A Database for Arachis hypogaea Nodule Developmental Gene Expression.
bioRxiv; 2021-01. doi: 10.1101/2021.01.30.428929.
Raul B., Kryvoruchko I., Benedito V A., Bandyopadhyay K, & Sinharoy S (2019).
Root nodule development in model versus non-canonical plants.
Plant Biotechnology: Progress in Genomic Era; (pp. 397-428)