Department: Centre of Agricultural Biochemistry and Biotechnology (CABB),
Position: Professor
HEC Approved Supervisor: YES
Research Intersts: Dr. Muhammad Sarwar Khan is an internationally well known Molecular Biotechnologist. He pioneered plant chloroplast genetic engineering approach in UK, Finland and Pakistan. He is pioneer in expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) in plant chloroplasts and his research findings were published in Nature Biotechnology and The Plant Journal. He is pioneer in developing plastid transformation in monocots; including rice and sugarcane. He developed efficient and reproducible regeneration protocols for rice, sugarcane and carrot. He also has developed methods for regenerating plants from in vitro grown rice and sugarcane to help cells to sort out and improve homoplasmy levels of transgenic chloroplasts. His research interests are: functional analyses of chloroplast genes by reverse genetics and expression of foreign genes in the chloroplasts to confer agronomic traits such as insect-pest resistance, salinity and herbicide tolerance. Further, his group is actively involved in overexpression of antigenic and therapeutic proteins in chloroplasts to develop cost-effective therapeutics and vaccines since chloroplasts are distinguished photosynthetic organelles within plant cells having their own genome. Plastid gene expression resembles with their prokaryotic progenitor. Transgenic plastids offer unique advantages to plant biotechnology, including high-level foreign gene expression, absence of epigenetic effects and gene containment due to lack of transgene transmission through pollens.
Publications:
Regular
041-9201087, 041-9200161 Ext. 2925/2926
directorcabb@uaf.edu.pk