Plant Immunology Research Group

The focus has been researching immune systems in plants with the help of different Bioinformatics and Biotechnological tools. Their two Ph.D. students have graduated finding answers to the questions around roles of different genes in immunity pathways. Numerous Master’s students have also been part of this journey. Their work has been published in notable research journals and there are still a few in the pipeline.

There has currently been combining Biotech experiences with the management education over the past few years from some of the best business schools in the world including University of San Francisco School of Management and Durham University Business School. They are interested in Digital aspects of lifesciences mainly Digital Health and how it is making its way into our daily lives. For example, how product development in the Digital Health sector resembles traditional Pharma product value chain? Questions like these are the foundations of my current research group located at EBS University of Business and Law in Frankfurt, Germany.

If you find the topics of our interest intriguing, please get in touch and we may find a way for you to become part of our research group.

Selected Publications

1. Wajeeha Shamsi, Atif Jamal, Nasar Virk, Muhammad Faraz Bhatti, (2019) “The mycovirus database an e-bank for mycoviral genomes”, International Journal of Latest Trends in Engineering and Technology Special Issue, 12 (6), pp. 007-011
2. Fahim A,…Virk N,…(2018) Structural insights and characterization of human Npas4 protein. PeerJ 6:e4978 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4978
3. Younus, A.,…Virk, N.,… (2018) Structure-Function Mutational Analysis and Prediction of the Potential Impact of High Risk Non-Synonymous Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism on Poliovirus 2A Protease Stability Using Comprehensive Informatics Approaches. Genes, 9, 228.
4. Hira Iftikhar, Nasar Virk* and Muhammad Faraz Bhatti (2018) Homology Modeling of CTR1 Protein Kinase Domain in Solanaceae Species for Identification of Salient Features in terms of Structure and Function, and Interaction Analysis with Lipids. Current Proteomics 15(4): 329 – 340
5. Iftikhar H.,…Virk N.,…(2017). In silico analysis reveals widespread presence of three gene families, MAPK, MAPKK and MAPKKK, of the MAPK cascade from crop plants of Solanaceae in comparison to the distantly-related syntenic species from Rubiaceae, coffee. Peer J. 5:e3255. 10.7717/peerj.3255
6. Aslam R.,…Virk N (2017) Genome wide analysis of wheat calcium ATPases and potential role of selected ACAs and ECAs in calcium stress. BMC Plant Biology. 17:174. DOI 10.1186/s12870-017-1112-5