Prasad Parchuri, Assistant Professor

Prasad Parchuri

Contact information

268 Chalmers Hall
(785) 532-6615
pprasad@ksu.edu

Education

Ph.D., 2020, CSIR-Academy of scientific and innovative research, India. Biological Science.

Area(s) of Specialization

Plant lipid biochemistry and synthetic biology; oilseed metabolic engineering; structure–function of lipid enzymes; stress-responsive membrane-lipid remodeling.

Research Focus

Plant seeds are renewable factories that produce a diversity of fatty acids (~450 “unusual” structures) with value for food, biofuels, and oleochemicals. Global demand for vegetable oils is projected to roughly double by 2040, yet expansion is constrained by limited arable land, the undomesticated status of many high-value oilseed species, and yield losses under abiotic stress. Over five decades of research have revealed that triacylglycerol (TAG) formation is embedded in a multi-compartment, highly connected lipid network. Uncertainties remain in the pathways, mechanisms, and enzymes that regulate fatty-acid flux between plastids, endoplasmic reticulum, and lipid droplets, and in how TAG assembly competes and coordinates with membrane-lipid production. These knowledge gaps are magnified across species, which have evolved distinct branches of lipid metabolism to accumulate oils with diverse compositions. Consequently, prior breeding and engineering efforts have delivered only modest, often unpredictable gains in total oil and fatty-acid profiles of engineered plants.

My group addresses these challenges using an interdisciplinary, mechanism-to-design approach that integrates biochemistry, molecular genetics, synthetic biology, and multi-omics:

  1. Decode lipid-flux control. Elucidate the biochemical/molecular mechanisms and protein activities that partition acyl flux between membrane and storage lipids across plant species, resolving pathway connectivity and enzyme function in vivo.
  2. Engineer predictive biomanufacturing. Translate the above mechanistic insights using synthetic-biology strategies to reprogram lipid networks in conventional oilseeds, enabling reliable production of specialized fatty acids for food, fuels, and oleochemical feedstocks.
  3. Build stress-resilient membranes. Define how membrane-lipid remodeling shapes abiotic-stress responses and leverage this knowledge to engineer climate-resilient crops.

Together, these efforts my group aims to deliver a predictive framework and practical toolkits for designing high-value, sustainable plant oils and stress-tolerant oilseed crops for the society.

Selected Publications

Parchuri, P., Bhandari, S., Azeez, A., Chen, G., Johnson, K., Shockey, J., Smertenko, A., Bates, PD. (2024). Identification of triacylglycerol remodeling mechanism to synthesize unusual fatty acid containing oils. Nature Communications 15 (1):3547. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47995-x

Shockey, J., Parchuri, P., Thyssen, GN., Bates, PD. (2023) Assessing the biotechnological potential of cotton type-1 and type-2 diacylglycerol acyltransferases in transgenic systems. Plant Physiology and Biochemistry 196:940-951. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plaphy.2023.02.040

Azeez, A., Parchuri, P., Bates, PD. (2022) Suppression of Physaria fendleri SDP1 increased seed oil and hydroxy fatty acid content while maintaining oil biosynthesis through triacylglycerol remodeling. Frontiers in Plant Science 13: 931310, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.931310

Parchuri, P., Pappanoor, A., Naeem, A., Durrett, T. P., Welti, R., & Sreedhar, R. V. (2022). Lipidome analysis and characterization of Buglossoides arvensis acyltransferases that incorporate polyunsaturated FAs into triacylglycerols. Plant Science, 324:111445, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plantsci.2022.111445

Parchuri, P., Anjali, P., & Sreedhar, R. V. (2021). Plant-based stearidonic acid as sustainable source of omega-3 fatty acid with functional outcomes on human health. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 61(10):1725-1737, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2020.1765137

Parchuri, P., & Sreedhar, R. V. (2020). Identification and functional characterization of Buglossoides arvensis microsomal fatty acid desaturation pathway genes involved in polyunsaturated fatty acid synthesis in seeds. Journal of Biotechnology, 308:130-140, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbiotec.2019.12.006

Sreedhar, R. V$., Parchuri, P$., Reddy, L. P. A., Rajasekharan, R., & Srinivasan, M. (2017). Unravelling a stearidonic acid-rich triacylglycerol biosynthetic pathway in the developing seeds of Buglossoides arvensis: A transcriptomic landscape. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 10473. ($First author equal contribution). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-09882-y

View the complete list of publication here

Patents

Bates, Philip D., Sajina Bhandari, Prasad Parchuri, and Abdul Azeez. "Method and modified organisms for biosynthesis of target fatty acids." U.S. Patent Application 18/632,652, filed October 17, 2024.