Kannan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Biological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research
(IISER), Berhampur. He completed his PhD in Biotechnology from Madurai Kamaraj
University, and his research focused on rice functional genomics through
Agrobacterium T-DNA tagging and targeted gene knockouts using homologous
recombination-based systems. Following his doctoral studies, he worked as a DBT
Research Associate at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore,
investigating nitrate-responsive microRNA pathway signalling cascade in rice. He subsequently
completed his postdoctoral research at the Institut Jean-Pierre Bourgin (IJPB,
INRAE) in France, where he focused on small RNA dynamics during pollen
development in Arabidopsis. His current research at IISER Berhampur
integrates genomics, epigenetics, and small RNA biology to decode transposon
silencing mechanisms during plant reproduction, with the long-term goal of
overcoming postzygotic hybridization barriers to advance crop improvement and
hybrid seed development.
Pachamuthu, K., Simon, M., Borges, F. (2024). Targeted suppression of siRNA biogenesis in Arabidopsis pollen promotes triploid seed viability. Nature Communications 15:4612.
Pachamuthu, K., and Borges. F. (2023). Epigenetic control of transposons during plant reproduction: From meiosis to hybrid seeds. Current Opinion in Plant Biology 75:102419.
Pachamuthu, K., Sundar, V.H., Narjala, A., Singh, R.R., Das, S., Harshit C.Y., Pal, A., Shivaprasad P.V. (2022). Nitrate-dependent regulation of miR444-OsMADS27 signaling cascade controls root development in rice. Journal of Experimental Botany 73: 3511–3530.
Huc, J., Dziasek, K., Pachamuthu, K., Who, T., Köhler, C., and Borges, F. (2022). Bypassing reproductive barriers in hybrid seeds using chemically induced epimutagenesis. The Plant Cell. 34: 989-1001.
Kannan, P*., Chongloi, GL*., Majhi, B.B., Basu, D., Veluthambi. K., Vijayraghavan, U., (2021). Characterization of a new rice OsMADS1 null mutant generated by homologous recombination-mediated gene targeting. Planta 253: 39. (*equal first authors).
Swetha, C., Basu, D., Pachamuthu, K., Tirumalai, V., Ashwin N., Prasad M., Shivaprasad P.V. (2018). Major domestication-related phenotypes in indica rice are due to loss of miRNA-mediated laccase silencing. The Plant Cell 30: 2649–2662.
