Advisory Board and Editors Plant Science
Tushar K. Dutta
I am a Senior Scientist at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, involved in pursuing basic and applied research in the field of Nematology and Entomology.
As an alternative to Bt Cry toxins for insect pest management, a number of novel bacterial protein toxins (Txp40, TcaB) derived from an insect-parasitic bacterium Photorhabdus akhurstii (symbiont of nematode Heterorhabditis indica) were characterized. The mode of action and pathogenesis process of these toxins were investigated in different lepidopteran insects including Galleria mellonella, Helicoverpa armigera, Spodoptera litura and S. exigua. The potential receptor proteins and their binding sites for these toxins were unravelled from the insect midgut epithelial cells.
My other research interests include molecular basis of plant-nematode interaction. Using RNAi, functional analysis of several plant parasitism processes was deciphered including the role of Mi-cpl-1 in metabolic process, FLP and NLP neuropeptides in neuromusculation process, ODR and TAX proteins in chemotaxis process, cell wall degrading enzymes and various MSP effectors in infection process of plant nematodes. I have contributed in understanding the genetic basis of nematode resistance in rice via genome-wide association mapping coupled with omics-driven strategies. I am currently pursuing genome editing research for developing nematode resistance by adopting CRISPR-Cas9 strategy in Arabidopsis, rice and tomato.
Luis E Eguiarte
Professor of the Evolutionary Ecology Department at the Institute of Ecology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
Mohamed A. El-Esawi
Dr. Mohamed A. El-Esawi is Professor at Faculty of Science, Tanta University, Egypt. Dr. El-Esawi received his BSc and MSc from Tanta University, and his Ph.D. degree from Dublin Institute of Technology, Technological University Dublin, Ireland. After obtaining his Ph.D., Dr. El-Esawi joined the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, University of Sorbonne in France, University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium and University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom as a visiting research fellow. His research focuses on genetics, molecular biology, environmental health and safety, environmental stress, biotechnology, molecular physiology, developmental biology, and bioinformatics. He has authored more than 150 international peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, books, and patents, and has participated in more than 70 conferences and workshops worldwide. Dr. El-Esawi has received several grants and international awards and recognition, including the Plants 2021 Young Investigator Award (MDPI, Switzerland). He has been ranked among the world's top 2% Scientists by Stanford University in USA, and is currently involved in several research projects.
Jurgen Engelberth
Dr. Jurgen Engelberth has a Ph.D. in plant physiology from the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. After working at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology and at USDA, ARS, CMAVE in Gainesville, FL, he joined the biology faculty at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). He is currently an Associate Professor for plant biochemistry. He is an Associate Editor for Plant Signaling and Behavior and Plants. His work is focussed on plant-plant interactions by volatiles signals in response to biotic and abiotic stresses.
Sherif Ashraf Fahmy
Dr. Sherif Ashraf Fahmy obtained his B. Pharm with honors from the Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University, and his MSc (2015) and Ph. D. (2020) in Chemistry from The American University in Cairo. His Ph. D. was conducted in collaboration with the Department of Pharmaceutics & Biopharmaceutics, Faculty of Pharmacy, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany. Dr. Fahmy was selected as one of the first recipients of the prestigious and very competitive fellowship offered by the Alfi Foundation for Ph.D. students. He has also spent time as a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics, Faculty of Pharmacy, Philipps University of Marburg, Germany, in 2018.
He has received several other awards and recognitions, most notably, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC, UK) Travel Grant for Ph.D. students & Early Career Scientists in 2019, the Fulbright Scholarship at Ohio University in 2019, USA, and the Mobility Grant to participate in the Research Opportunity Week (ROW) organized by the Technical University of Munich in 2022. Dr. Fahmy has published several peer-reviewed articles in international journals and many abstracts at local and international conferences (H- index of 15). Dr. Fahmy’s research focuses on exploring novel herbal medicine, extracting and characterizing their major active ingredients, and investigating their anticancer activities. In addition, Dr. Fahmy’s research encompasses the design, physicochemical characterization, and biological evaluation of innovative targeted and functionalized drug delivery systems to treat cancer effectively. These systems are based on several nanomaterials, including but not limited to polymeric nanoparticles, naovesicles (niosomes, liposomes, bilosomes, etc.), supramolecular nanocontainers (calixarenes, cucurbiturils, cyclodextrins), and metallic nanoparticles.
Also, Dr. Fahmy is a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC), the American Chemical Society (ACS), and ESMO. Also, he serves as a reviewer for many international journals. Dr. Fahmy is a full-time Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the School of Life & Medical Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, Egypt Campus. Also, he is the Head and Founder of the Herbal Medicine & Nanotherapeutics research group at the same university.
Marwa A. A. Fayed
Dr. Marwa Fayed is an Associate Professor of Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry within the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sadat City, Egypt.
Interested in Phytochemical and Pharmacognostical studies of medicinal plants, isolation of bioactive constituents from different natural sources using advanced chromatographic techniques (separation on VLC, column chromatography using different adsorbents such as RP, Sephadex, Cellulose or Polyamide and separation using PC), structure elucidation of naturally isolated compounds using different spectroscopic techniques (1D, 2D).
More recently, she has developed a significant interest in monitoring the pharmacological effects and mechanism of action of different classes of chemical compounds isolated from natural sources and their possible role in medicine.
Antonio Flores-Moya
Full Professor (Department of Botany and Plant Physiology, Universidad de Málaga, Spain) from 2008. My PhD thesis (1993) was focused on deep-water like-kelp populations at the Strait of Gibraltar. Later, I focused on ecophysiology and taxonomy of seaweeds from southern Iberian Peninsula. In 2002, I started a new research line focused on experimental evolution of photosynthetic microorganisms. I have had stays in several institutions in France (Laboratoire Arago, Université Paris VI), Sweden (Upssala Universitet), England (Robert Hill Institute, University of Sheffield), Germany (Alfred Wegener Institute für Polar und Meeresforschung), Japan (Kobe University Research Center for Inland Seas) and Australia (Australian Institute for Marine Science), and two expeditions to Antarctica.
Atsushi Fukushima
I am a professor at Kyoto Prefectural University. My current research interests focus on characterization of metabolic regulatory networks and integrated analysis of multi-omics data in plants. I am a member of the editorial board for BMC Genomics, Plant Methods, Frontiers in Plant Science, Plants, BioTech, and PeerJ.
Ioannis Ganopoulos
Dr. Ganopoulos received his BSc degree in Agriculture from the University of Thessaly (2000-2005) and his MS and PhD in Plant Breeding from AUTH (2005-2007/2008–2013). He has been awarded a Heracleitus PhD scholarship by the European Social Fund and the Hellenic National Fund. His recent scientific interests focus on epigenetics, DNA methylation, whole genome sequencing and trascriptomic analysis for molecular breeding purposes. He has participated in four research projects, one of them competitive European project. He has published 93 reviewed articles in SCI journals and h-index=27 (citations 2051 in Scholar google). He was a co-worker in national/international projects and he is Editor in Biochemical Genetics and PeerJ journals.
Sònia Garcia
My research is mainly directed towards understanding processes involved in plant genome evolution and organisation, from the sequence to the whole genome. Three areas are highlighted: the study of the evolution of genome size; the structure, organisation and function of ribosomal RNA genes (rDNA) and telomere repeats, and the role of polyploidy and transposable elements (TE) in genome evolution. I have advanced these fields by: (1) the discovery of a novel arrangement of rDNA, first in several Asteraceae and later extended to gymnosperms, (2) the discovery of new telomere sequences in several organisms and (3) the launch and updating of four genomic databases, one compiling Asteraceae genome sizes; the next, on the number and distribution of rDNA sites in plant chromosomes; the following on the distribution of B chromosomes across biodiversity, and the most recent one on plant sex chromosomes. I am the PI of a project on the role of ribosomal DNA in evolution, including the analyses of the repeatome. I was recently involved in a project to examine the role of TE in the evolution of non-model plants and I also participate in a project on the origin and varieties of Cannabis. Beyond this, last year I started an initiative in my Institute to stress the role of women in science, by a series of conferences explaining the biographies and discoveries of relevant scientists in the fields of botany, genetics and genomics, both to the specialised and general public.
Suresh Gawande
Dr. Suresh Gawande is a Principal Scientist at ICAR-Directorate of Onion and Garlic Research, Pune, India. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India in the discipline of Plant Pathology. His areas of interest are genomics of biotic and abiotic stress, host-pathogen-vector interaction of tospoviruses, microbial metagenomics, plant-pathogen diagnostics, mechanism of genetic and induced host plant resistance. Currently, he is working on biotechnological approaches for biotic stress management.
Sjirk Geerts
I am fascinated by the complex interactions among ecosystem entities. Human impacts on ecosystems call for a better understanding of the resilience of ecosystem functions in the face of rapid environmental changes. The study of spatial interactions between plants and animals, in particularly the study of pollination, is therefore important. Bird pollination in particular is one of my main interests.
One of the main impacts on ecosystems in Cape Fynbos are alien invasive plant species. Other than trying to understand the ecological processes enabling alien species to invade, I am also focused on the best management of emerging alien invasive plant species.
Lastly, I also have a keen interest in restoration, plant demography and the ecological interaction between termites, aardwolf and herbivores.