Recognizing Plant Physiology authors: Hitaishi Khandal

Hitaishi Khandal, first author of MicroRNA397b-LACCASE2 module regulates root lignification under water- and phosphate deficiency

Current Position: Post-Doctoral fellow, Faculty of Biology, Israel Institute of Technology-Technion, Haifa, Israel

Education: Ph.D. from National Institute of Plant Genome Research, New Delhi, India, affiliated to Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Non-scientific Interests: art, reading and travelling

Brief bio: Dr. Hitaishi Khandal did her masters in Biotechnology from Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala, India and joined National Institute of Plant Genome Research for the Ph.D. program. Her interest is to uncover mechanistic details of root growth and development during normal condition and abiotic stresses. Interplay of plant hormones and post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression are her focus area. She uses the model plant Arabidopsis and a legume crop chickpea for her studies. After completing her Ph.D., she spent a year as a post-doctoral fellow in the same institute and then moved to Technion, Israel for further post-doctoral training on the same subject. Currently, she is trying to uncover cellular components linking nutrient availability, steroid hormone signals and root growth plasticity.