Deepak Barua
Assistant Professor
Biology
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune
India
Biography
He is currently working the Department of Biology, IISER, Pune, India.
Research Interest
There is tremendous diversity in organismal responses to the environment, and in the underlying traits and mechanisms. Broad goals of my research are to characterize such variation, identify traits and interactions among traits that translate to variation in plant performance, and test how variation in plant performance influences population persistence and adaptation in complex ecological environments. Currently, I am interested in examining stress tolerance in plants, especially tolerance to heat stress. My emphases are to characterize the mechanisms of physiological, biochemical and cellular adaptations to heat stress, and to understand the ecological and evolutionary consequences of these adaptations. This will help us identify how heat stress constrains species distributions, and it will provide crucial information necessary to accurately predict plant responses to future climate change and to anticipate associated changes in plant productivity, distribution, and diversity. I use an integrated experimental approach in my work, utilizing tools and perspectives from evolutionary biology, ecology, physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology.
Publications
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Donohue K, Heschel MS, Chiang GCK, Bultler CM, Barua D. (2007) Phytochrome mediates germination responses to multiple seasonal cues. Plant Cell & Environment 30: 202-212
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Barua D, Heckathorn SA. (2006) Heat-shock protein accumulation in Solidago altissima in the field and laboratory: interactive effects of light and temperature. American Journal of Botany 93: 102-109
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Barua D, Heckathorn SA. (2004) Acclimation of the temperature set-points of the heat-shock response. Journal of Thermal Biology 29: 185-193 Gerloff-Elias A, Barua D, Spijkerman E, Molich, A. (2006) The pH and temperature response of stress proteins from an unicellular green algae isolated from an extremely acidic lake. FEMS Microbiology Ecology 56: 345-354
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Barua D, Downs CA, Heckathorn SA. (2003) Variation in chloroplast small heat-shock protein function is a major determinant of variation in thermotolerance of photosynthetic electron transport among ecotypes of Chenopodium album. Functional Plant Biology 30: 1071-1079
