COMSTECH Webinar On “Metabolomics Gateway for Milestone Discoveries in the Prehistoric and Post Genomic Era”
Prof. Dr. Mohamed Ali Farag
Alexander von Humboldt Fellow
TWAS fellow from Africa
Professor, Faculty of Pharmacy,
Pharmacognosy department
Cairo University, Egypt.
Date and Time: 7th January, 2022 from 16:00-17:30 Pakistan Standard Time
Overview:
The ability to sequence the whole plant and human genomes has established that our knowledge with respect to gene function is rather limited. Functional genomics analyses include investigations at the level of gene expression (transcriptomics), protein translation (proteomics) and more recently the metabolite network (metabolomics). Metabolomics is the study of global metabolite profiles in a system (cell, tissue, or organism) under a given set of conditions. The analysis of the metabolome is particularly challenging due to the diverse chemical nature of metabolites in a cell and the massive number of molecules detected which warrants the use of bioinformatics for its analysis.
The lecture will provide an overview of metabolomics and will discuss its complementary role within system biology. It will highlight how metabolome analyses are being conducted using different spectroscopic techniques, and how the highly complex data generated are analyzed using bioinformatics tools. Specific examples will then be presented to illustrate how metabolomics can lead to valuable information relative to natural products biosynthesis, herbal medicines quality control analysis and lastly analysis of ancient Pharaonic food.
Target Audience:
The webinar is open to students, researchers, scientists, and academicians from the OIC member states, and other countries.
For Registration please visit: https://forms.gle/7eFuxgUh6v1DfcFD7
Procedure to Join: Zoom link will be shared with registered participants.
Profile of Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Mohamed Ali Farag completed his PhD at Texas Tech University, USA, in 2003. In 2005, after spending time as a postdoctoral fellow at The Samuel Noble Foundation, USA, and the James Graham Brown Cancer Center, USA, he became assistant professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University, Egypt.
Currently, Prof. Farag works as a Professor at the Chemistry Department, American University in Cairo (AUC) where his research work focuses primarily around applying innovative biochemical technologies (metabolomics) to help answer complex biological questions in medicine, herbal drugs analysis and agriculture.
Furthermore, Prof. Farag works as a Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, to participate in teaching plant metabolomics and chemomterics modelling for master students, and in 2009–2010 he held the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship in Germany.
Prof. Farag has been recognized with several awards, including Abd el Hameed Shoman award (2016), Egypt Higher State Incentive Award (2012), Cairo University Incentive Award (2009), TWAS award in Science Diplomacy (2014), and the Mass Spectroscopy Performance Award, TTU, USA (2004). For his highly cited publications with close to 8000 citations and an H index of 40, Prof. Farag was selected as a top researcher in the field of plant biology in Africa by the American society of plant biology, USA. Prof. Farag is also a TWAS Fellow in Agriculture from Egypt.
Webinar Coordinator:
Muhammad Haseeb Ahmad
Program Officer
COMSTECH, Islamabad.
Email: Haseeb.ahmad@comstech.org
Phone: +92 51 9220681