Muhammad Ali

• PhD (Virology & Immunology) NUST Islamabad
• Professor (Associate) at University of Management and Technology

Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas), a phloem-limited alphaproteobacterium, is the predominant species associated with the devastating citrus disease Huanglongbing (HLB). It is transmitted by the insect Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), Diaphorina citri Kuwayama (D. citri), which carries the infectious bacterium. The bacterium CLas exhibits host-spe...

The coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2 has enveloped virions with single-stranded positive-sense RNA genome. It infects mammals, including humans, via the respiratory tract. The non-structural protein of coronavirus, main protease (3CLp) is a key enzyme in the disease’s progression. This study aimed to screen phytochemicals derived from Calotropis Pro...

Flavivirids are single stranded, positive-sense RNA viruses that belong to family Flaviviridae. Being responsible for ever evolving diseases and various health problems, flavivirids are big threat to world's health. Plant secondary metabolites as drug candidates may interfere flavivirids' replication. This study is an effort to computationally anal...

The Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) system, a set of highly polymorphic genes, has been found to play an effective role in the disease resistance and disease susceptibility. In this study, prevalence of class-I alleles of HLA was characterized at HLAA,- B and -C loci in the 216 individuals randomly selected population at different regions of Punjab p...

Tuberculosis, being one of the top 10 death causing diseases worldwide, is still widespread in developing countries. Pakistan is currently ranked fifth among the high tuberculosis burden countries and 5 % of the total patients worldwide are from this country. The study was conducted on 633 tuberculosis patients involving both pulmonary and extrapul...

Recombination between isolates of different virus species has been known to be one of the sources of speciation. Weeds serve as mixing vessels for begomoviruses, infecting a wide range of economically important plants, thereby facilitating recombination. Chenopodium album is an economically important weed spread worldwide. Here, we present the mole...

Background Bhendi or okra ( Abelmoschus esculentus ) is an important crop widely cultivated in the Indian subcontinent. The production of okra in tropical regions is constrained by several abiotic and biotic factors. Among biotic stresses, yellow vein mosaic disease (YVMD), transmitted by the whitefly ( Bemisia tabaci Genn.), causes significant pro...

TULP3 is involved in cell regulation pathways including transcription and signal transduction. In some pathological states like in cancers, increased level of TULP3 has been observed so it can serve as a potential target to hamper the activation of those pathways. We propose a novel idea of inhibiting nuclear localization signal (NLS) to interrupt...

Parthenium hysterophorus [commonly known as Carrot grass; native to American tropics; family Asteraceae] is a flowering, short-lived perennial or an annual invasive-weedy plant. In the recent few years, the plant is spread (in epidemic proportions) vigorously, at least, in the two provinces (KP and Punjab) and the twin capital cities (Islamabad and...

The increased and non-judicious use of pesticides and fertilizers has associated complications on the human, animal and plant health. They may accumulate in water and soil to reduce diversification of croplands, limit nutrients availability and diminish genetic diversity of the associated microbes, flora and fauna. Chemical pesticides and fertilize...

Apple stem grooving virus (ASGV; genus Capillovirus) is an economically important virus. It has an approx. 6.5 kb, monopartite, linear, positive-sense, single-stranded RNA genome. The present study includes identification of 24 isolates—13 isolates from apple (Pyrus malus L.) and 11 isolates from pear (Pyrus communis L.)—from different agricultural...

Members of the genus Ebolavirus (family Filoviridae) are among the deadliest viral pathogens spread throughout the world with severe rate of mortality, at least 90% in some outbreaks. Their virions are filamentous and enveloped with enclosed negative-sense single-stranded RNA genome. The genome potentially expresses seven structural and nonstructur...

Recent articles have pointed the impact of co‐epidemics/co‐infections of COVID‐19 and other infectious diseases on an already overburdened healthcare infrastructure 1, 2. With the present toll of COVID‐19 cases reaching beyond 10,922,324 infected cases and claiming 523,011 lives ³. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

We have read recent articles regarding co‐epidemics/co‐infections of COVID‐19 and other infectious diseases 1‐4, these reports highlights the impact of co‐infections on the health care system. The recent pandemic of COVID‐19 caused by a novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus ‐ SARS‐CoV‐2 has taken 378K lives and has spread worldwide in...

Night-blooming jasmine (Cestrum nocturnum; family Solanaceae) is one of the ornamental and medicinal plants grown in tropical and subtropical regions (Shaista and Amrita 2016). Papaya leaf curl virus (PaLCuV) (genus Begomovirus, family Geminiviridae) is a bipartite circular ssDNA molecule that causes severe disease in papaya (Byun et al. 2016) and...

We have read with great interests a recent article showing SARS‐CoV‐2 viral RNA in feces of children during their recovery period from the disease.¹ The study showed that even though no viral nucleic acid was detected in the throat swab specimens, the virus was identified in their feces samples. More recently, Li et al² and Liu et al.³ detected the...

Hepatitis B causes major deathly infections in developing countries. The surface antigen preS1, hepatocytes attachment site, plays a crucial role in development and progression of disease. The present study was, therefore, an effort to develop an efficient expression system for PreS1 gene in Esherishia coli. PreS1 gene was amplified and cloned in p...

Ficus virens (family: Moraceae) is a deciduous tree found in the Indian subcontinent, some other Southeast Asian countries, and Northern Australia. It is valued for its latex, wood, medicinal and edible products. In December 2018, during a routine survey to record begomoviruses other than cotton infecting viruses in Pakistan, curling of young leave...

Bread wheat is one of the most valuable cereal crops in the world. In the past 40 years, wheat yield and production has increased twice that can be attributed to selection breeding. However, to exploit the full potential of wheat to feed the growing world population, it is necessary to know the encoded genomic sequence information. Unfortunately, t...

Wheat is an important staple crop cultivated throughout the world. It has a complex genome with multiple copies of a gene. Due to the growing world population and increasing food demand, it is the need of time to increase the production capability of wheat crop. Apart from that climate change with sudden floods and drought conditions, serious atten...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major public health concern globally, resulting in liver-related complications. Approximately 6% population of Pakistan is infected with HCV. HCV is error prone, due to which it is classified into 7 genotypes and 67 subtypes. HCV genotype determination is critical for treatment and therapy response. In this study, 3,539...

Enterococcus faecium, is an important nosocomial pathogen with increased incidence of multidrug resistance (MDR) – specifically Vancomycin resistance. E. faecium constitutes the normal microbiota of the human intestine as well as exists in the hospitals and sewage, thus making the microorganism difficult to eliminate. Phage therapy has gained atten...

Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) is one of the major concerns to the farmers as it infects several crops of economic importance such as tomato. The mechanism of viral infection in host initiates on the entry of TMV in the host cell and production of a capping enzyme i.e. RNA polymerase. Replication of virus produces multiple mRNAs which further encodes m...

Biofilm is involved in a variety of infections, playing a critical role in the chronicity of infections. Enterobacter cloacae is a biofilm-forming and multi-drug-resistant (MDR) nosocomial pathogen leading to significant morbidity and mortality. This study aimed at isolation of a bacteriophage against MDR clinical strain of E. cloacae and its effic...

In Pakistan, around 11 million people are infected with, at least, six circulating genotypes and subtypes of hepatitis C virus (HCV). The viral burden is still on rise. HCV genotype determination is necessary to devise appropriate antiviral therapy. Previous reports highlight the prevalence circulating untypable (in diagnostic perspectives) HCV sub...

Luteoviruses are economically important plant viruses. Specifically, barley yellow dwarf virus is epiphytotic to almost all small-grain cereal growing areas. The disease cycle is complex. This luteovirus has evolved several intelligent mechanisms to communicate with both plant and phloem-feeding insect-vector aphid. Environmental cues influence dis...

The causative agent of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Since its discovery before 30 years, a number of drugs known as highly active antiretroviral therapy have been developed to suppress the life cycle of the virus at different stages. With the current therapeutic approaches, ending AIDS means prov...

Microscopic entities, microorganisms that drastically affect human health need to be thoroughly investigated. A biofilm is an architectural colony of microorganisms, within a matrix of extracellular polymeric substance that they produce. Biofilm contains microbial cells adherent to one-another and to a static surface (living or non-living). Bacterial...

Aims: To identify, isolate, and characterize a lytic bacteriophage against the multiple-drug resistant clinical strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa-2995 and to determine the phage efficacy against the bacterial planktonic cells and the biofilm. Main methods: Wastewater was used to isolate a bacteriophage. The phage was characterized with Transmissi...

Luteovirus is a phytopathogenic monopartite virus of global importance. Re-assortment and recombination by exchanging genome segments play vital role in the virus evolution. Differences in the breadth and specificity of host range, serology and divergence of >10 % amino acids in any gene product (ORF) are the basis of Luteovirus species distinction...

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the leading food grain crop of Pakistan that contributes 2.7 percent to the GDP. However, the crop is significantly affected by Barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV). To combat with, introduction of virus-derived gene(s), through genetic engineering, is a powerful tool to confer resistance. Wheat is considered recalcitran...

Luteoviruses are economically important plant viruses, infecting almost all cereals throughout the world. Idiosyncrasies related to this virus group may be a strategic consequence of viral genome compression. However, many fundamental questions have yet to be resolved. This review summarizes selected findings covering molecular aspects of pathogene...

Barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV) is a potential threat to the agriculture production. The amplified complete coat protein sequences of the isolate M07 and M12 were determined to be 597 bp and 603bp, respectively. M07 showed maximum nucleotide sequence identity of 87.6% (84.3% amino acid sequence identity) to a Chinese isolate of BYDV-PAV. Whereas,...

Malnutrition is a serious global problem today. One of the major causes of this malnutrition is that the food supplements do not provide ample nutrients for the high risk groups. In this study sixteen wheat varieties namely; Nacozari-76, Fakhr-e-Sarhad, Pirsabak-04, Inqulab-91 and Rawal-87 were evaluated for physiochemical and nutritional propertie...

Wheat breeders in Pakistan relied upon phenotypic traits as indices of genetic variation among different wheat varieties which may genotypically be closely related or vice versa. The main objective of the current study was to determine the genetic diversity among different popular wheat cultivars grown in the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KPK) region of Paki...

The studies were carried out with plantlets of two indigenous cultivars of mulberry species Morus alba and Morus nigra grown in soil less cultures, where extracts from roots, shoots, leaves, and reproductive organs were determined for protein content, agglutination of human erythrocytes and the activity of the ammonium assimilatory enzyme glutamine...

Phytic acid is a major storage form of phosphorous. Obvious reasons are there to favor its reduced concentration in organisms. However, certain justifications can also be settled, in order to support its increased natural concentration. In both cases, there are questions to be answered to favor one side while alleviating the harm of neglecting the...

Searching to explore the new avenues is the basis of science. An experiment consisting of six spring wheat genotypes viz. Pirsbak-85, Dera-98, Ghaznavi-98, Fakhr-e-Sarhad, Takbeer and SARC-3 were planted at Malakandher Research Farm, NWFP Agricultural University Peshawar during, 2004-2005. The experiment was laid out in randomized complete block de...

Plant breeding is the management of variation. Genotypic performance of segregating wheat populations gives way to breeders for further improvement. Important yield attributing traits of wheat were determined at Summer Wheat Nursery, Kaghan (High altitude area with more than 2000 meters above the sea level), during summer 2005. Thirteen F 3 segrega...