Welcome to the Raina lab in the Department of Biology at Syracuse University.
The overall goal of our research is to understand how plants sense the environment and activate defense against pests. We use genetic and molecular approaches to identify the genes involved in these processes and the molecular mechanisms regulating the responses.
Genetic and molecular mechanisms regulating plant-pathogen interaction:
Infection of host plants by pathogens results in one of these two possible outcomes: disease (compatible interaction) or resistance (incompatible interaction). Resistance responses involve recognition of pathogen, siganl transduction and coordinated activation of several hundreds of plant genes. The long-term goal of our research is to identify the plant defense genes and analyze their role in defense against pathogens.
Functional genomics of cell signaling in plants:
Receptor-like kinases (RLKs) are involved in signal perception and transmission through the cell surface. In Arabidopsis, RLKs constitute a large family consisting of more than 600 family members. However, the function of very few of these genes is known. The long-term goal of this project is to determine the role of RLKs in regualting various plant processes by identifying downstream targets of these genes