S2: Episode 3: Arun Sharma - Keeping tomatoes fresh

Prof. Arun Sharma received his Ph.D. in Life Sciences from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India, in 1987 after carrying out work on the regulation of nitrate assimilation by phytochrome in the laboratory of Prof. Sudhir Sopory. He performed post-doctoral work with Dr. G. Kumar at the School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, in 1998 and at Wayne State University, Detroit, from 1989 to 1991, in the area of DNA-protein interaction. He did post-doctoral work with Prof. Sudhir Sopory at JNU, New Delhi, from 1991-94 and with Professor Akhilesh Tyagi at University of Delhi, South Campus (UDSC) from 1995-1997 in the area of signal transduction during the regulation of genes in plants. He became Assistant Professor at the Department of Plant Molecular Biology, UDSC in 1997, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2002 and Professor in 2010. At UDSC, he worked from 1997 to 2023 in the area of structural and functional genomics of tomato and other areas. The work included sequencing a part of chromosome 5 as a member of the International Tomato Genome Consortium and the development of tomato plants with improved nutritional quality and longer shelf life. The other areas of research had been the role of methylated DNA-binding proteins in gene silencing in Arabidopsis and tomato, and the development of an edible vaccine against cholera. Prof. Sharma was nominated as a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India, in 2012.