Akhilesh Kumar Tyagi (born 15 May 1956) is an Indian plant biologist and the former director of National Institute of Plant Genome Research. Known for his studies on
plant genomics and biotechnology, Tyagi is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies namely
Indian Academy of Sciences
The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore was founded by Indian Physicist and List of Nobel laureates, Nobel Laureate Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, C. V. Raman, and was registered as a society on 27 April 1934. Inaugurated on 31 July 1934, it ...
,
Indian National Science Academy
The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) is a national academy in New Delhi
New Delhi (; ) is the Capital city, capital of India and a part of the Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three b ...
and
National Academy of Sciences, India
The National Academy of Sciences, India, also known as NASI, was established in 1930 and is the oldest science academy of India. It is located in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. Prof. Meghnad Saha was the founder president.
Fellows
* Suddhasatwa Bas ...
as well as
The World Academy of Sciences
The World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS) is a North–south research partnerships, merit-based science academy established for developing countries, uniting more than 1,400 scientists in some 1 ...
and the
National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The
Department of Biotechnology
The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is an Indian government department, under the Ministry of Science and Technology responsible for administrating development and commercialisation in the field of modern biology and biotechnology in India. ...
of the Government of India awarded him the
National Bioscience Award for Career Development
The National Bio-science Award for Career Development or N-BIOS Prize is an Indian science award for recognizing excellence and promoting research in bio-sciences disciplines. It was instituted in 1999 by the Department of Biotechnology of the Gov ...
, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences in 1999.
Biography

Akhilesh Kumar Tyagi was born on 15 May 1956 at Waira Ferozepur in
Bulandshahr district
Bulandshahr district (also spelled Bulandshahar) is a district in the Meerut region in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), situated between the Ganga and Yamuna rivers. It is a part of the National Capital Region of India, and Bulandsh ...
of the Indian state of
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh ( ; UP) is a States and union territories of India, state in North India, northern India. With over 241 million inhabitants, it is the List of states and union territories of India by population, most populated state in In ...
and completed his high school at Public Intermediate College,
Siyana
Siyana is a city and a municipal board with 25 wards, situated in Syana Tehsil, Siyana Tehsil in the district of Bulandshahr district, Bulandshahr in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Demographics
As of 2011 Indian Census, Siana NPP had a tota ...
in 1970
and Intermediate at
Government Intermediate College,
Meerut
Meerut (, ISO 15919, ISO: ''Mēraṭh'') is a city in the western region of the States and union territories of India, Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Located in the Meerut district, it is northeast of the national capital, New Delhi, and is ...
in 1972. And, after earning his BSc in 1974 from Meerut college, he continued his studies at
D.A.V.Post Graduate College Dehradun to obtain MSc in 1976.
Subsequently, he completed MPhil in 1977 at Institute of Advanced Studies, Meerut and proceeded to
Delhi University
The Delhi University (DU, ISO 15919, ISO: ), also and officially known as the University of Delhi, is a collegiate university, collegiate research university, research Central university (India), central university located in Delhi, India. It ...
for his doctoral studies to secure a PhD in 1983 for his thesis on ''
haploid cell
Ploidy () is the number of complete sets of chromosomes in a cell, and hence the number of possible alleles for autosomal and pseudoautosomal genes. Here ''sets of chromosomes'' refers to the number of maternal and paternal chromosome copies, ...
culture and genetics''. He started his career as a scientist at the Department of Plant Molecular Biology of the University of Delhi at their
South Campus and after working there for a year (1983–84), he moved to Germany for his post-doctoral work on ''photosynthesis-related chloroplastic and nuclear genes'' at two universities there; at
Düsseldorf University during 1984–85 and at
Munich University
The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...
from 1985 to 1986.
Returning to India, Tyagi re-joined the University of Delhi at their
South Campus in 1988 as a member of faculty of the Department of Plant Molecular Biology and became a professor in 1994.
He was appointed as the head of the department in 1992 and after serving in that position for three years, he became the chair of the Board of Research Studies, Interdisciplinary and Applied Sciences from 1995 to 2003. During 1998–2001, he also had the additional responsibility as the head of the Department of Plant Molecular Biology. In 2005, he became the director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Plant Genomics of Delhi University and after serving ICGP till 2009, he moved to National Institute of Plant Genome Research, an autonomous research institution of the
Department of Biotechnology
The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is an Indian government department, under the Ministry of Science and Technology responsible for administrating development and commercialisation in the field of modern biology and biotechnology in India. ...
as its director, and held position till 2016. Presently, he is serving at University of Delhi as Professor of Plant Molecular Biology.
Legacy

One of the major contributions of Tyagi has been his efforts towards crop improvement in India using molecular physiology,
genomics
Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of molecular biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, ...
, and
transgenics and his work is reported to have assisted in widening our understanding of ''neo- and sub-functionalization of regulatory gene families in plants during evolution''.
He has been among the group of scientists of Delhi University who worked on genome-wide sequencing of rice, tomato and chickpea.
He has worked on genes and regulatory elements of rice cultivation, investigated the
transcriptome
The transcriptome is the set of all RNA transcripts, including coding and non-coding, in an individual or a population of cells. The term can also sometimes be used to refer to all RNAs, or just mRNA, depending on the particular experiment. The ...
profile of crops
and was successful in discovering a new stress-associated protein gene family in plants.
His studies have been documented by way of more than 250 articles.
He has mentored over 120 post-doctoral, doctoral, master or other research scholars in his career
and has delivered more than 300 invited lectures in national and international seminars and conferences.
Besides, he sits in the editorial boards of journals such as
Transgenic Research,
''Rice'',
and ''Molecular Genetics and Genomics'',
and is a former editorial board member of ''International Journal of Plant Genomics'' and ''Journal for Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology''.
Tyagi, a former president as well as a former general secretary of the
National Academy of Sciences, India
The National Academy of Sciences, India, also known as NASI, was established in 1930 and is the oldest science academy of India. It is located in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. Prof. Meghnad Saha was the founder president.
Fellows
* Suddhasatwa Bas ...
,
has been involved with several government or semi-government projects related to crop development such as two Indian initiatives on Rice Genome Sequencing and Tomato Genome Sequencing, Network Project on Rice Functional Genomics and Next Generation Challenge Program in Chickpea Genomics.
He was the coordinator for the establishment of the Centre for Plant Molecular Biology at South Campus and chaired two task forces namely Task Force on Human Resource Development of the
Department of Biotechnology
The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is an Indian government department, under the Ministry of Science and Technology responsible for administrating development and commercialisation in the field of modern biology and biotechnology in India. ...
(2003–06) and the Program Advisory Committee for Pant Sciences of the
Department of Science and Technology (2007–15).
He is the president of the Indian Society for Plant Physiology
and has served as the vice-president of the Society for Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology (1995–2005) and the Indian National Science Academy (2010–11).
He is also a former executive director of National Agri-food Biotechnology Institute (2013–16).
Awards and honors
The National Academy of Sciences, India elected him as a fellow in 1998
and the
Department of Biotechnology
The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is an Indian government department, under the Ministry of Science and Technology responsible for administrating development and commercialisation in the field of modern biology and biotechnology in India. ...
of the Government of India awarded him the
National Bioscience Award for Career Development
The National Bio-science Award for Career Development or N-BIOS Prize is an Indian science award for recognizing excellence and promoting research in bio-sciences disciplines. It was instituted in 1999 by the Department of Biotechnology of the Gov ...
, one of the highest Indian science awards in 1999.
The same year, he received the elected fellowship of the Indian National Science Academy.
The National academy of Agricultural Sciences elected him as their fellow and he became an elected member of the Plant-Tissue Culture Association of India in 2001.
In 2004, he received the elected fellowship of the Indian Academy of Sciences.
The year 2006 brought two awards to Tyagi; the Birbal Sahni Medal of the
Indian Botanical Society and the NASI – Reliance Platinum Jubilee Award.
The
Department of Science and Technology selected him for the J. C. Bose National Fellowship in 2007, the tenure of the fellowship running until 2022.
He was chosen for the B. P. Pal Memorial Award of the
Indian Science Congress Association in 2008 and for the elected fellowship of
The World Academy of Sciences
The World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS) is a North–south research partnerships, merit-based science academy established for developing countries, uniting more than 1,400 scientists in some 1 ...
in 2009.
He received the Om Prakash Bhasin Award in 2011
and GM Modi award for Science and Technology in 2017. He was also a part of the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project (IRGSP) team which won the 2003 World Technology Award for Biotechnology (Corporate Division) in 2003 and the International Year of Rice Research Accomplishment Award in 2004.
The award orations delivered by him include SPIC Science Foundation Lecture of
Tamil Nadu Agricultural University
Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) is the state agricultural university of Tamil Nadu Headquartered in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. It is the first State Agriculture University (SAU) of India to be recognised by the Indian Council ...
(1998), Sinha Memorial Lecture of the Indian Botanical Society (2002), Y. Subbarow Memorial Lecture of
Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University
Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, formerly Indraprastha University (IP or IPU), is a state university located in Dwarka, Delhi, India. The university is organised around fourteen university schools and three university centers that f ...
(2005), B. P. Pal Memorial Lecture (2005) and Shri Ranjan Memorial Lecture 2012) of the National Academy of Sciences, India, Platinum Jubilee Lecture (2006), S. K. Mukherjee Commemoration Lecture (2012) and Prof. Archana Sharma Memorial Award (2014) of the Indian Science Congress Association, B. N. Chopra Lecture of the Indian National Science Academy (2007), F. C. Steward Memorial Lecture of the Plant Tissue Culture Association (2010), S. K. Sinha Memorial Lecture of the Indian Society For Plant Physiology (2013), T. N. Khoshoo Memorial Lecture of The Orchid Society of India (2015), A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Lecture of
Jiwaji University
Jiwaji University (JU) is a public collegiate university in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India. The name comes from Sir Jiwaijirao Scindia of Gwalior. The university was established on 23 May 1964 and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the President of Ind ...
(2016) and S. N. Patnaik Memorial Lecture of
Utkal University
Utkal University (UU) is a public university in Bhubaneswar, Khordha, Odisha, and is the oldest university in the state, and the 17th-oldest university in India. The university was established in 1943 and was operating from Ravenshaw College ...
(2016).
Selected bibliography
*
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See also
*
Chloroplast DNA
Chloroplast DNA (cpDNA), also known as plastid DNA (ptDNA) is the DNA located in chloroplasts, which are photosynthetic organelles located within the cells of some eukaryotic organisms. Chloroplasts, like other types of plastid, contain a genome s ...
*
Transcriptomics technologies
Transcriptomics technologies are the techniques used to study an organism's transcriptome, the sum of all of its RNA transcripts. The information content of an organism is recorded in the DNA of its genome and expressed through transcription. H ...
*
Serial analysis of gene expression
Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE) is a transcriptomic technique used by molecular biologists to produce a snapshot of the messenger RNA population in a sample of interest in the form of small tags that correspond to fragments of those tr ...
*
Gene expression
Gene expression is the process (including its Regulation of gene expression, regulation) by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product that enables it to produce end products, proteins or non-coding RNA, ...
*
Functional genomics
Functional genomics is a field of molecular biology that attempts to describe gene (and protein) functions and interactions. Functional genomics make use of the vast data generated by genomic and transcriptomic projects (such as genome sequen ...
Notes
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Tyagi, Akhilesh Kumar
N-BIOS Prize recipients
20th-century Indian biologists
1976 births
Living people
Scientists from Uttar Pradesh
Delhi University alumni
Academic staff of Delhi University
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf alumni
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni
Fellows of the Indian Academy of Sciences
Fellows of the Indian National Science Academy
Fellows of the National Academy of Sciences, India
Fellows of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences
TWAS fellows
People from Bulandshahr district