This award is for joint research in molecular biology entitled US-India Cooperative Research: Glycosylation Studies of Rabies Virus Glycoprotein Produced in Transgenic Plants. The collaborators are US PI Lokesh Joshi, Arizona State University and Professor Ramanjini Gowda, University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore. They will study the glycosylation pattern of viral protein expressed in plants and will generate the full-length viral glycoprotein through agrobacterium-mediated nuclear transformation. The research objectives are to express the rabies viral protein antigen (RGP) in tobacco and muskmelon and purify the recombinant protein; and secondly, characterize the specificity of glycosylation patterns and determine the glycans residues in plant derived viral glycoprotein. The proposed research will provide important understanding of N-glycosylation structures and processes in distantly related plants that could ultimately contribute to the development of edible vacines against rabies.
Scope: Utilizing RPG produced in transgenic plants to generate recombinant proteins is a novel approach that has potential advantages such as cost-efficiencies and contamination safe factories. The research will add to fundamental knowledge about the carbohydrate pattern and roles of glycosylation on the rabies virus glycoprotein. The collaboration will exploit the complementary expertise of the US and Indian investigators. There will be an exchange of scientists, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows under this award. This project is supported by the Government of India's Department of Science and Technology (DST) under the NSF/DST joint program.
