Dr Aiswarya Girija
Strategic Research Fellow
Contact Details
- Email: aig15@aber.ac.uk
- ORCID: 0000-0002-7802-7145
- Office: 212, PT Thomas building, Plas Gogerddan
- Twitter: @DrAsh_G
- Research Portal Profile
Profile
My research is focused on developing climate-resilient and nutritionally enriched cereals using multi-omics approaches. I have expertise in metabolomics, molecular biology, protein expression, and biochemistry. I completed my PhD in Plant Biotechnology at Kerala University, India, on Type III polyketide synthases in Indian Gooseberry, followed by postdoctoral research at MIGAL, Israel, studying methionine metabolism in Arabidopsis. In 2020, I was awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (SUPERTEFF) to advance the Ethiopian gluten-free cereal Tef, applying metabolomics to assess nutritional diversity and drought-adaptive traits, and developing tissue culture and gene-editing pipelines. I am passionate about applying fundamental plant science to improve understudied cereals such as oats and tef, supporting sustainable agriculture and global food security.
Additional Information
Interested in plants stress adaptation and nutrition?
Undergraduate and Master student projects.
Enthusiastic students are welcome to carry out projects for a final year project or summer internship. I have lots of project ideas that can be tailored based on your interests. Please get in touch.
Looking for PhD or Post-Doc fellowships?
I am looking for people who have a passion for understanding plant development under stress environment and also on exploring nutrient rich gluten free crops like oats and teff. If you are interested in applying for a PhD or Post - Doc fellowship with me, send a CV and a cover letter explaining why you are interested and what you would like to study. I will get in touch to discuss the possible opportunities and funding options.
Research
How ‘omics’ approaches can be used to breed climate resilient and nutrient rich crops?
Unpredictable climate changes impose stress in crops that can dynamically regulate various molecular events. I am interested to track the stress adaptive mechanism using ‘multi-omics’ strategies (phenomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics) in elucidating the metabolite-gene regulatory nodes that can confer stress resilience during different growth stages (grain filling, seedling).
Mapping the unknown fate of stress to future generations.
Plants can sense and remember the changes that occur in their environment. This memory is linked to the “epi-genome”. These epigenetic changes represent a “stress memory” which can be “forgotten” but can be reimposed by “reminders”. These reminders can be renewed by “priming” by physical and chemical processes. Priming events will induce the plant immune memory by reiterating key epigenetic modifications. These changes are not fully understood but represents an opportunity for a new approach to sustainable crop protection. My research focuses on identifying stress memory networks and epialleles that are associated with stress memory. Crucially, priming is a feasible and cost-effective strategy to enhance stress tolerance that could be readily exploited.
Alternative functional grains.
With the increase in lifestyle diseases like diabetes, cholesterol and rise in the consumption of more vegan food there is a demand for new functional plant-based foods. Over the last century research has been pioneered over the major crops, wheat and rice. Cumulatively, minor crops play important roles in global food security. Two such promising cereals are oats and tef. Oats are rich in dietary fibre like high glucan, calcium, oil, protein and antioxidants. Tef is a tiny sized gluten free grain from Ethiopia with high level of iron, calcium and protein. Sourdough fermentation is an emerging technology, and I am interested to identify the application of sourdough technology in developing functional plant-based foods.