Gaurav Zinta

Dr. Gaurav Zinta recently joined as a Senior Scientist in the Biotechnology Division at CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (CSIR-IHBT), Palampur, Himachal Pradesh.

In 2010, he availed FWO Fellowship to pursue his Ph.D. (2010-2014) from the University of Antwerp, Belgium. After completing his Ph.D., he worked as a PostDoc fellow in the same University for a short duration. In August 2015, he received a PostDoc Fellowship from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) to work at the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology, Center of Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, CAS, China.

The key areas of his research interest include integrative molecular plant stress physiology, climate change biology, genome editing, epigenetics, and chemical genetics.

During his Ph.D., he worked on how plants respond and adapt to global climate change. Arabidopsis and European grassland species were used to elucidate the impact of climate change. Specifically, he used multi-scale analyses (spanning from genes to ecosystem levels) to decipher plastic and adaptive plant responses to combinatorial (high CO2, heat and drought) and long-term/transgenerational stresses. Such integrative analysis is crucial to get deeper insights into plant processes and develop climate change adaptation strategies in the future.

During his PostDoc, he worked on plant stress epigenetics and chemical genetics. Also, he used gene-editing (CRISPR/Cas9) to manipulate gene function to develop plants best suited to grow under harsh environmental conditions.

So far, he has published 35 peer-reviewed articles and 2 book chapters in top-notch journals, including Nature Communications, PNAS, Global Change Biology, Journal of Experimental Botany, New Phytologist, Journal of Hazardous Materials, Biotechnology Advances, Trends in Plant Sciences, etc. He participated in several training courses and conferences across the globe, including Germany, Ireland, Poland, France, Belgium, Netherlands, etc. He is a member of the editorial boards of several journals. For example, he is a Feature Editor for Molecular Plant; Associate Editor for Plant-Environment Interactions; Associate Editor for CABI Agriculture and Bioscience; Associate Editor for BMC Plant Biology. He is serving as a Review Editor for Frontier in Plant Science and Frontiers in Genetics. He also participated in several science outreach programs and was selected as a Plantae Fellow-2019 (American Society of Plant Biology) and eLife Ambassador-2019 to communicate science to a broader audience.

The current focus of his lab (Integrative lab Plant Adaptatomics Lab, iPAL) at CSIR-IHBT Palampur is on understanding plant adaptive mechanisms to climatic stress by using Arabidopsis thaliana and high altitude crops.

Joined 2022

Organisation