Biological and Life Sciences

Her research primarily focuses on the development and testing of tools to assist plant breeders in the introduction of novel traits in crop improvement. These tools utilise biotechnology approaches of gene stacking and genome editing. In the genome editing, using CRISPR/Cas9, with rice as a model system, her team showed that point mutagenesis in the form of single base additions/deletions (indels) occur at greater frequency than big deletions (Pathak et al., 2019). The controlled approach of Cas9 expression is more desirable than its constitutive expression, as the constitutive expression leads to more off-target effects than the controlled expression (Nandy and Pathak et al., 2019).  Her research at Ahmedabad University will focus on optimising, evaluating and testing the feasibility of these novel tools used in genome editing and gene stacking before their integration in the mainstream of crop improvement of oil seed crops, which are a primary focus of Gujarat region.

• Berchembrock YV, Botelho FB, Pathak B, Zhao S and Srivastava V (2025). Rice plants response to modulation of the ERECTA signaling. Scientia Agricola, v.82, e20230131
• Kaushal C*, Sachdev M*, Parekh M, Gowrishankar H, Jain M, Sankaranarayanan S and Pathak B (2025). Transcriptional Engineering for Value Enhancement of Oilseed Crops: A Forward Perspective: Frontiers in Genome Editing 6:1488024
• Berchembrock YV*, Pathak B*, Maurya C, Botelho FB, and Srivastava V (2022). Phenotypic and transcriptomic analysis reveals early stress responses in transgenic rice expressing Arabidopsis DREB1a. Plant Direct.6:e456
• Pathak B*, Maurya C*,  Faria MC*, Alizada Z, Nandy S, Zhao S, Jamsheer K M, and Srivastava V (2022) Targeting TOR and SnRK1 Genes in Rice with CRISPR/Cas9. Plants 11: 1453
• Pathak B, Nandy S, Srivastava V (2022). Multigene Transformation Through Cre-lox Mediated Site-Specific Integration in Rice. In Plant Gene Silencing. 293-302. Humana, New York, NY
• Pathak B and Srivastava V (2020). Recombinase‐mediated integration of a multigene cassette in rice leads to stable expression and inheritance of the stacked locus. Plant Direct 4: 1-10 
• Nandy S*, Pathak B*, Zhao S and Srivastava (2019). Heat-shock inducible CRISPR/Cas9 system generates heritable mutations in rice. Plant Direct. May 3; (5):e00145. 
• Pathak B, Zhao S, Manoharan M, and Srivastava V (2019). Dual-targeting by CRISPR/Cas9 leads to efficient point mutagenesis but only rare targeted deletions in the rice genome. 3 Biotech. Apr 1; 9(4):158. 
• Pathak BP, Pruett E, Guan H, and Srivastava V (2019). Utility of I-Sce I and CCR5-ZFN nucleases in excising selectable marker genes from transgenic plants. BMC Research Notes. Dec 12; (1):272. 
• Zhao Y, Kim JY, Karan R, Jung JH, Pathak B, Williamson B, Kannan B, Wang D, Fan C, Yu W, Dong S, Srivastava V and Altpeter F (2019). Generation of a selectable marker free, highly expressed single copy locus as landing pad for transgene stacking in sugarcane. Plant Molecular Biology. Jun 1; 1-7. 
• Zale J, Jung JH, Kim JY, Pathak B, Karan R, Chen X, Wu H, Lui H, Candreva J, Zhai Z, Shanklin J and Altpeter F (2016). Metabolic engineering of sugarcane to accumulate energy-dense triacylglycerols in vegetative biomass. Plant Biotechnology. Feb 14 ;( 2) 661-669. 
• Nandy S, Zhao S, Pathak BP, Manoharan M and Srivastava V (2015). Gene stacking in plant cell using recombinases for gene integration and nucleases for marker gene deletion. BMC Biotechnology. Dec; 15(1):93. 
• Jain M*, Pathak BP*, Harmon AC, Tillman BL and Gallo M (2011). Calcium dependent protein kinase (CDPK) expression during fruit development in cultivated peanut (Arachis hypogaea) under Ca2+-sufficient and -deficient growth regimens, Journal of Plant Physiology. Dec 15; 168(18):2272-7. 

*Equal contributing authors 

BIO502: Plant Biotechnology and Tissue Culture

BIO507: Plant Tissue Culture Techniques (Lab)

BIO260: Introduction to Plant Biology 

BIO261: Plant Biology Practicals (Lab)

RES703: Scientific Research Methodology

FDP102: Environment and Climate Change

Current:

Vidushi Saraswat (Oct 2025-Present): PhD student

Priyanka Rajput (Oct 2024- Present): (Postdoctoral) Research Associate and Adjunct Faculty

Harini Gowrishankar (Jan 2024-Present): PhD student

Nensi Mungra (December 2023-Present): IMS student

Liya Phillip (October 2023-Present): IMS student

Pratham Patel (April 2025-Present): IMS student

Dhrushti Thakkar (May 2025-Present): IMS student

Past Members:

Dhruvisha Bhanderi (May 2025-June 2025): Summer Research Intern

Pouras Desai (May 2025-June 2025): Summer Research Intern

Khushi Pandya (December 2023-April 2025): IMS student

• Thesis: Understanding the Role of Calcium in Mitigating Salinity Stress Response through Transcriptomics in Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana L.)

Ankita Srivastava (January 2024-April 2025): IMS student

• Thesis: Effect of external calcium supplementation on plant architecture in Arabidopsis thaliana and Eleusine coracana L.

Siya Bhandari (August 2024-April 2025): Undergraduate student

• Thesis: Characterization of Somatic Embryogenesis Like Receptor Kinase (SERK) in Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana L.)

Mahak Sachdev (Jan 2023-September 2024): (Postdoctoral) Research Associate

Kshitija Mishra (Jan 2023-April 2024): IMS student

• Thesis: Enhancing the tissue culture response for Figure Millet (Eleusine coracana L.) and Peanut (Arachis hypogaea)

Mansi Parekh (Jan 2023-June 2024): IMS student

• Thesis: A morpho-physiological and Transcriptomic Approach to Understand the Salinity Stress Response in Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana L.)

Kavisha Manik (Oct 2022- April 2023): IMS student

• Thesis: Standardization of Embryo Rescue Protocol in grape variety Thompson Seedless