Anandita's broad research interest lies in the field of Plant Genomics. It primarily relates to developing an understanding of the natural genetic and morphological variation in crop and other plant species of economic value. The intent is to exploit and treat it as a resource, in combination with various genomic approaches, for interpreting the molecular basis of plant adaptation to stressful environments and important life history traits. The knowledge thus gained is envisaged to be useful for developing sound strategies for breeding crop species and other economically important plants. Together with her group, she is currently focusing on understanding and characterizing the regulatory elements viz. transcription factors and miRNAs underpinning such adaptive traits as flowering in members of Brassicaceae. Anandita was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship by the Max Planck Society, Germany, to undertake research at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tuebingen, in the Department of Plant Molecular Biology of Professor Detlef Weigel. The main focus of her work there concerned developing a mechanistic understanding of flowering response in Arabidopsis thaliana using wide range genomic approaches. Her doctoral thesis entitled 'DNA fingerprinting for assessment of genetic diversity in medicinal plant species ' involved the assessment of the natural variation and genetic diversity in important medicinal tree species namely, Azadirachta indica (neem) and Emblica officinalis (amla). She carried out extensive work on neem, and her research findings implicated India as the true Center of Origin for neem. At TERI SAS, she has contributed in formulation and is teaching following courses at Master?s and pre-PhD level: Principles of Genetic Engineering and Bio-analytical Techniques; Molecular Markers and Breeding; Environmental Biotechnology: Plant Biotechnology in Agriculture Sector; Genetic Engineering and recombinant DNA Techniques; Molecular Genomics and Genetics.

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Publications:

• Singh S and Singh A (2021) A prescient evolutionary model for genesis, duplication and differentiation of MIR160 homologs in Brassicaceae. Molecular Genetics and Genomics (DOI) 10.1007/s00438-021-01797-8
• Sri T, Gupta B, Tyagi S, Singh A (2020) Homeologs of Brassica SOC1, a central regulator of flowering time, are differentially regulated due to partitioning of evolutionarily conserved transcription factor binding sites in promoters. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution DOI 10.1016/j.ympev.2020.106777
• Tyagi S, Sri T, Singh A, Mayee, Shivaraj SM, Sharma P, Singh A (2019) SUPPRESSOR OF OVEREXPRESSION OF CONSTANS1 influences flowering time, lateral branching, oil quality, and seed yield in Brassica juncea cv. Varuna. Functional and Integrative Genomics 19: 43-60, DOI: 10.1007/s10142-018-0626-8
• Tyagi S, Mazumdar PA, Mayee P, Shivraj SM, Anand S, Singh A, Madhurantakam C, Sharma P, Das S, Kumar A, Singh A (2018) Natural variation in Brassica FT homeologs influences multiple agronomic traits including flowering time, silique shape, oil profile, stomatal morphology and plant height in B. juncea. Plant Science 277: 251-266, DOI: 10.1016/j.plantsci.2018.09.018
• Shivraj SM, Jain A, Singh A (2018) Highly preserved roles of Brassica MIR172 in polyploid Brassicas: Ectopic expression of variants of Brassica MIR172 accelerates floral transition. Molecular Genomics and Genetics. 293: 1121-1138 DOI: 10.1007/s00438-018-1444-3
• Dhakate P, Tyagi S, Singh A, Singh A (2017) Functional characterization of a novel Brassica LEAFY homolog from Indian mustard: Expression pattern and gain-of-function studies. Plant Science 258: 29-44
• Negi MS, Sharma SS, Singh A , Chauhan S, Adholeya A, Tripathi SBT (2017) Analysis of Genetic Diversity of Indian Tea Accessions Using Two Modified Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism Methods. Proceedings of National Academy of Science, India, Sect. B Biol. Sci. doi:10.1007/s40011-016-0798-8
• Shivraj SM, Singh A (2016) Sequence variation in Brassica AP2 and analysis of interaction of AP2-miR172 regulatory module. Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture (PCTOC) 125: 191–206
• Mayee P, Singh A (2016) Natural genetic variation in Brassica homologs of FLOWERING LOCUS T and characterization of its expression domains. Journal of Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology. 25: 270-277
• Sri T, Mayee P, Singh A (2015) Sequence and expression variation in SUPPESSOR of OVEREXPRESSION of CONSTANS 1 (SOC1): Homeolog evolution in Indian Brassicas. Development Genes and Evolution. 225: 287-303
• Dhakate P, Shiv SM, Singh A (2014) Design of artificial miRNA for redundant silencing of Brassica SHP1 and SHP2: transient assay-based validation of transcript cleavage from polyploid Brassicas. Acta Physiol Plant 36: 2125-2135
• Shivraj SM, Dhakate P, Mayee P, Negi MS, Singh A (2014) Natural genetic variation in MIR172 isolated from Brassica species. Biologia Plantarum 58: 627-640, 2014
• Rosloski SM, Singh A, Jali SS, Balasubramanian S, Weigel D, Grbic V (2013) Functional analysis of splice variant expression of MADS AFFECTING FLOWERING 2 of Arabidopsis thaliana. Plant Mol Biol 81: 57-69
• Balasubramaniaan S, Schwartz C, Singh A, Warthmann N, Kim MC, Maloof J, Loudet O, Trainer GT, Tsegaye Dabi, Borewitz, Chory J, Weigel D (2009) QTL mapping in new Arabidopsis thaliana advanced intercross recombinant inbred lines. PLoS One 4: e4318
• Singh A, Das S, Wilson N (2007) Genomics and IP: An Overview. Journal of Intellectual Property Rights 12: 57-71
• Lempe J, Balasubramanian S, Sureshkumar S, Singh A, Schmid M and Weigel D (2005) Diversity of Flowering Responses in Wild Arabidopsis thaliana Strains. PLoS Genet 1:109-18
• Singh A, Chaudhury A, Srivastava PS, Lakshmikumaran M (2003) Comparison of AFLP and SAMPL markers for assessment of intra-population genetic variation in Azadirachta indica A Juss. Plant Science 162: 17-25 (IF: 3.3)
• Singh A, Negi MS, Moses VK, Venkateswarlu B, Lakshmikumaran M (2002) Utility of AFLP markers in ascertaining the clonal fidelity in tissue-culture raised neem plantlets. In Vitro Cellular and Developmental Biology-Plant 38, 519-524
• Negi MS, Singh A and Lakshmikumaran M (2000) Genetic variation and relationship among and within Withania species as revealed by AFLP markers. Genome 43: 975-980
• Singh A, Negi MS, Rajagopal J, Bhatia S, Tomar UK, Srivastava PS, Lakshmikumaran M (1999) Assessment of genetic diversity in Azadirachta indica using AFLP markers. Theoretical and Applied Genetics 99: 272-279