Hyderabad: The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology, has sanctioned Rs6.18 crore to the Repository of Tomato Genomics Resources (RTGR) at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) for “Research and Service facilities for Plant Metabolomics and Proteomics” for a period of four years.
Prof. RP Sharma and Dr Y Sreelakshmi associated with the Department of Plant Sciences in the School of Life Sciences at UoH were instrumental in leading multi-crore research projects funded by the DBT to improve nutrition and shelf-life of tomatoes. The DBT has recognized RTGR as the Center of Excellence for ‘Genome Engineering in Tomato’.
This will be the first facility in the country to provide a dedicated service on plant metabolomics and proteomics. The research at RTGR will be providing service to UoH and other academic institutions, industry, seed, and companies on a charge basis. They will also train the users to comprehend and execute metabolomic and proteomic data analysis by conducting annual hands-on training workshops, said a press release from UoH on Monday.
Associate professor at RGTR, Dr Y. Sreelakshmi, will be coordinating the project to provide high-throughput plant metabolome and proteome analyses to the users.
The RTGR was established in 2010 at UoH with funding from the DTB to conduct advanced scientific research in the frontier areas of genomics, proteomics and metabolomics of tomato.
The research infrastructure established at the RTGR is now accessible to the universities and research institutes across the country through major funding from the DBT-SAHAJ Infrastructure scheme.
