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Sohail Asif Qureshi

Department of Biology

Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering

Dr. Sohail A. Qureshi joined SSE-Biology in January 2011. Prior to that he was an endowed Jafferali Lalji Professor of Molecular & Cellular Biology at The Aga Khan University (Karachi, Pakistan). He earned his doctorate in molecular biology in 1989 from the University of Maine-Orono (USA) and subsequently carried out his postdoctoral work in Glasgow University, Imperial Cancer Research Fund (London) and Cambridge University. In 1997, he took up a faculty position in the Department of Neurology, University of Wisconsin-Madison and in 2001 joined PanVera/Invitrogen Corporation as a Senior Research Scientist of Molecular Biology & Assay Development. His research interests are gene regulation in extremophilic Archaea, hepatitis-C virus and epigenetics of disease.

 

Professor
PhD, Molecular Biology University of Maine-Orono,USA

sohail.qureshi@lums.edu.pk
+92 42 3560 8349

Research Interests

Gene Regulation in Hyperthermophilic Archaea

Archaea represent a highly diverse class of prokaryotic microorganisms capable of withstanding harsh environmental conditions such as extremes of temperature, pH, salinity and pressure; it is because of these features that they are sometimes also referred to as "extremophiles". Despite being prokaryotic, Archaea share a number of features with eukaryotes one of which is their transcriptional apparatus. Studies to date have shown that the 10-subunit RNA polymerase, TATA-binding protein (TBP) and transcription factor-B (TFB) altogether serve as minimal set of factors required to transcribe most Sulfolobus gene promoters. A number of other proteins have also been implicated in transcription but their roles in this process are not well understood. Using Sulfolobus as a model organism, we are studying mechanisms through which heat shock, DNA damage and oxidative stress are induced. Specifically, our goal is to identify factors that sense such stresses and to understand how they interact with the various components of transcription machinery to influence expression of their respective target genes.

Biology of Hepatitis-C Virus
Hepatitis-C viral (HCV) infections reduce the quality of life for over 170 million people worldwide. Although HCV was discovered about 21 years ago, the available treatment options for infected individuals are limited. Despite much effort, development of vaccines and drugs against HCV has been hampered due to rapid evolution of virus. My group is interested in studying the basic biology of HCV and in particular to understand how HCV encoded proteins influence the transcriptome, proteome and epigenome of infected hepatocytes during the different stages of infection. Additionally, our aim is to identify conserved regions within the HCV genome that may serve as useful vaccine candidates.