About
Dr. Raja Rajakani is working as an “Assistant Professor” in the Department of Biotechnology, Sharda School of Engineering and Technology, Sharda University, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. He worked as a postdoc fellow in the Laboratory of Chromatin Biology, Plant Plasticity Research Centre, Seoul National University, South Korea, from January 2022 to June 2025. His postdoc research focuses on “Identifying the molecular mechanisms of thermomorphogenesis during callus/shoot proliferation at warm temperatures” as well as “Identification of the mechanisms of action of key regulators at molecular and tissue levels during the reprogramming process of plant cells” in Arabidopsis model system using confocal microscopy, single-cell RNA-seq, deep RNA-seq, small RNA-seq, and other cutting-edge molecular and epigenetic techniques, including ChIP and Cut and Tag. He was awarded as a DBT-RA fellow (DBT_RA/2022JanuaryN/1642) funded by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India, New Delhi. He also worked as a senior research fellow in India (MS Swaminathan Research Foundation) and jointly funded by Australia (University of Tasmania) collaborative project IABF titled “Developing salt-tolerant rice for food security in India and Australia. His work focused on Oryza coarctata, a halophytic wild rice model system to study salinity tolerance. He developed a novel method for isolating salt glands and generated transcriptomes from salt glands and other tissues of O. coarctata. He did physiological and molecular analysis of salt secretion in leaf hairs and its Na+ ion transport and compartmentalization in root, rhizome, and leaf with the help of confocal and MIFE systems and published it in the Journal of Experimental Botany. He visited the School of Science and Health, Western Sydney University, Australia, in 2019 and trained on confocal microscopy. He is involved in generating leading rice cultivars using plant genome editing via CRISPR Cas9 system. He also conducted studies in plant miRNAs and identified conserved SNP (G/A) in the pre-miR396c region of O. sativa that alters base pairing across the miRNA-miRNA* duplex, potentially affecting miRNA biogenesis, and published in Scientific Reports. He has earned his PhD in biological sciences from the AcSIR-Academy of Scientific & Innovative Research, CSIR-Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CSIR-CIMAP), Lucknow, India, titled “Molecular cloning and studies on isoprenoid metabolism genes and gene regulatory components of Azadirachta indica and Artemisia annua.” His PhD work focused on the two medicinal plants Artemisia annua known for producing the antimalarial drug artemisinin, and Azadirachta indica, which produces the natural biopesticide azadirachtin. In Artemisia annua, secondary metabolism-related No Apical Meristem (NAC) and Ethylene Responsive Factor (ERF)-like TFs have been identified and characterized as negative-regulators in Artemisinin biosynthesis with the help of molecular and biochemical techniques, including yeast two-hybrid and HPTLC. In Azadirachta indica, a novel RNA protocol was developed (published), subtractive transcriptomes generated and miRNAs were identified for the first time (published) and two terpene synthase-like genes were functionally expressed in a yeast system and characterized using GCMS. He is a member of the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB). He has participated in international conferences and workshops and delivered talks at several national symposiums and webinars. He has also received the best oral presentation award at GIGYASA conference for, “Small molecules: A new way out for crops facing drought,” held at CSIR-CIMAP, Lucknow. He has guided numerous postgraduates and undergraduates in biotechnology. He has published 12 research articles in international journals and is also involved in the peer-reviewing process with several publishing groups.