Aparna Dutta Gupta


Aparna Dutta Gupta is an Indian scientist and professor. She teaches in the Department of Animal Biology, School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad. Her research is on zoology, developmental biology and endocrinology. She has carried out research in the field of insect physiology, focusing on pests and their control. Her novel contribution includes that insect fat body expresses hexamerin genes, and the expressed proteins are sequestered by various tissues including male accessory-glands and play a role in reproduction.
Aparna Dutta Gupta, born on 11 th May 1953, obtained her bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees from Banaras Hindu University. She has trained a large number of postgraduate students and mentored more than 25 Ph.D students. She was Fulbright Scholar, Indo-German Exchange Programme Fellow, INSA-Czech Academy Exchange Fellow, DST-DAAD Personal Exchange Fellow, INSA-DFG International Exchange Fellow and INSA-JSPS Bilateral Exchange Fellow. She is also an elected Fellow of Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, and The National Academy of Sciences.

Education

Gupta received her Ph.D. from Banaras Hindu University. She is a fellow of INSA, NASI, and IASc.

Career

She was a Fulbright Scholar & Visiting Scientist, Department of Biology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, USA. She was the Coordinator of the Centre for Biotechnology and has also served as Head, Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Hyderabad.

Awards and fellowships

She has received the following fellowships from various international organisations.
She is an outstanding teacher and well-known researcher in the field of insect biology and has served the University of Hyderabad with distinction for more than 35 years. She primarily works on an economically important group of insects which include a large number of stored grain and agricultural pests. Her studies using biochemical and molecular tools have unraveled the developmental and hormonal regulation of various genes, their proteins and the specific physiological processes in insects. Her research revolves around fat body hexamerin gene expression and their hormonal regulation during the postembryonic development, membrane receptor mediated sequestration of hexamerins by various tissues and their role in immunity, reproduction, silk secretion and during the metamorphosis, identification of novel candidates with immune function, identification and characterization of Bacillus thuringiensis Cry toxin binding receptors in larval midgut and other visceral tissues and deciphering the basis for the development of resistance against Bt toxins in various lepidopteran insects. Her group has identified several candidate genes and their corresponding proteins, which could be exploited either for delivering or targeting molecules and/or growth regulators, which disrupt insect development and reproduction.

Publications