Ms. Sanskriti is a Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (SPM) fellow at the Agri-Biotechnology Division of National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI), Mohali, Punjab. She is particularly passionate about changing the perspective of the people of our country regarding genetically modified (GM) crops, making them aware about the potential offered by advanced biotechnological tools and how they can help humanity in the future. She is interested in the cutting-edge technology of CRISPR/Cas, especially because of its potential to generate non-transgenic plants with desired mutations much more quickly than any other breeding practice.
Because of this interest, in her Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, Sanskriti is experimenting with the potential of sgRNA/Cas ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) to produce precise mutations in protoplasts of major crops and generate whole plants thereof. The plants will be free from any foreign substances because of the short half-life of RNPs, and therefore have a potential for general public acceptance.
Before joining NABI, Sanskriti received both her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Botany from Panjab University, Chandigarh. She received a DST-INSPIRE Scholarship throughout her B.Sc. and M.Sc. programs. She was a gold medallist in her bachelor’s, and ranked 11th in the CSIR-UGC-JRF, 2017. She availed the UGC Junior Research Fellowship till December 2019. From January 2020, she has been working as an Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (SPM) fellow at NABI. Her work has been published in reputed international journals and she has also presented her work in multiple reputed international conferences.