Hemayet Ullah

Background

About Hemayet Ullah

Startup Biotech company: cropgenics.com At present, my lab efforts are geared toward developing technology to address drought and salt stress resistance in crop plants. Farmers of developing world suffer disproportionately during environmental stresses induced crop loss. Genetic knock-out of Arabidopsis RACK1A gene confers drought and salt stress resistance. It is hypothesized that chemical knock-out, as opposed to genetic knock-out, of RACK1A will provide a functional advantage in protecting plants from these stresses (circumventing GMO approach). Based on our deduced crystal structure, small compound library screen (Dr. Dakshanamurthy) resulted in isolating several small RACK1A ‘inhibitor’ compounds that confer drought and salt stress resistance in diverse crop plants. The increased resistance is an indirect effect from the compound's ability to sustain photosynthesis (prevent degradation of chloroplast) even under stress conditions. An evidence for the sustained photosynthesis is shown in the movie below where actively photosynthesizing leaves remained green and they float in water as they release oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis and the released oxygen is mainly trapped in the intracellular spaces making the leaves buoyant. With proper chemistry, the patented compounds await field trials as for their potential to apply safely like fertilizer. Watch the promotional movie here: Others: Patent Application on the Invention: Others: Serving as in the Executive Committee of the American Society of Plant Biologists as the Mid-Atlantic Section Rep (2013-16)