Gene-Edited Crops: The CRISPR Solution for Global Food Security

Author Biography

Dr Aftab Ahmad is currently working as an Associate Professor at the Department of Biochemistry/ US-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Agriculture and Food Security (CAS-AFS), University of Agriculture, Faisalabad (UAF), Pakistan. Dr Aftab’s research interests include developing virus resistant and salt-tolerant plants using CRISPR/Cas technology. He has published more than 30 research articles in international peer-reviewed journals including Frontiers in Plant Sciences, Journal of Biomedical Sciences, Scientific Reports-Nature, PLOS One, Journal of Translational Medicine, Plant Molecular Biology Reporter, Molecules, Journal of Cereal Science, and Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution. Dr Aftab pursued his PhD and postdocs in Plant Molecular Biology from the University of Shizuoka, Japan under the Center of Excellence (COE, 21st Century) program. Dr Aftab also served as a visiting scientist in the department of plant sciences, University of California, Davis, USA. Dr Aftab has been teaching biochemistry and molecular biology at UAF and his research focuses in the area of CRISPR/Cas based genome editing in plants. Dr. Nayla Munawar is currently working as an associate professor of biochemistry at the Department of Chemistry, College of Science, United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), Al-Ain, UAE. Dr. Munawar’s research interests include the synthesis from plants, whole microbial cells, and/or purified enzymes, analysis, and applications of biomaterials. She is interested in different protein and carbohydrate chemistry aspects, especially in the engineering of natural enzymes, molecules interactions, and epigenetic regulatory protein complexes. Her current research motivation is hydrolases, transferases, and dehydrogenase enzymes for the production of novel biomaterials for medical, agriculture, and biotechnological applications. She has published 30 articles in international peer-reviewed journals and 9 book chapters. She is a certified reviewer of MDPI journals and serves as guest editor of “Frontiers in Genome Editing” and “Frontiers in Biotechnology” journals. Dr. Nayla pursued her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Conway Institute, University College Dublin, Ireland in 2011 and then been awarded a postdoc position in the same institute in the field of proteomics and epigenetics. She has served as an assistant lecturer at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland, and then joined the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan as an assistant professor. She was offered another postdoc position at the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland in 2016, and then she joined the Department of Chemistry at the United Arab Emirates University, Al-Ain, UAE in 2019. Dr. Baohong Zhang is a well-known scientist and distinguished professor in the Department of Biology at East Carolina University (North Carolina, USA). Dr. Zhang received his bachelor’s degree in plant genetics and breeding at China Agricultural University and Ph.D. in environmental toxicology at Texas Tech University. Dr. Zhang not only provides leadership in research activities but also training our next generation scientists and serving our scientific community. He has been working on the field of genomics and biotechnology, including transgenic and genome editing, for more than 20 years, which are support by federal funding agents (NSF, NIH, DoD and USDA) and industries, such as North Carolina Biotechnology Center and DuPont. Dr. Zhang is frequently invited by the international conferences for giving plenary or keynote lectures. During his long and distinguished career, he has published 10 scientific books, including MicroRNAs in Stem Cell, and Transgenic Cotton, published >200 papers at the peer-reviewed international journals. His papers have been cited for more than 19,600 times; many of them were listed as highly cited papers by the ISI Web of Sciences. He is frequently invited to serve on grant reviewing panels, including NSF, USDA, DoE, and European Research Council Executive Agency. Dr. Zhang is also serving as Editor-in-Chief, associate editor or guest editor for 10 international journals, including Functional & Integrative Genomics, Plants, Scientific Reports, Plant Biotechnology Journal, Molecular Biotechnology, Plant Molecular Biology, and Journal of Cotton Research. Dr. Zhang frequently reviews manuscripts for more than 100 international journals, including Nature and Nature Biotechnology. Dr. Zhang has won many prestigious awards, including not only the Cotton Researcher of the year 2018, but also Science/AAAS Excellence in Science (2006), ECU Five Year Research Achievement Award (2013), THCAS Distinguished Professorship (2018). He has collaborated with more than 1,000 scientists from >20 countries and won the inaugural ECU Achievement in International Research and Creative Activity Award (2017). In 2018, he was elected to the Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2018) and won the Lifetime Achievement Research Award from ECU (2019). In 2020, he also won the Cotton Biotechnology Award.