Mohammad Islam Khan (1957–2010) was an Indian glycobiologist and a scientist at the

National Chemical Laboratory The National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) is an Indian government laboratory based in Pune, in western India. Popularly known as NCL, a constituent member of the CSIR India, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) India, it was estab ...

. Known for his studies on the biology of

Lectin Lectins are carbohydrate-binding proteins that are highly specific for sugar groups that are part of other molecules, so cause agglutination of particular cells or precipitation of glycoconjugates and polysaccharides. Lectins have a role in rec ...

s, Khan was an elected fellow of the

National Academy of Sciences, India The National Academy of Sciences, India, established in 1930, is the oldest science academy in India. It is located in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. Prof. Meghnad Saha was the founder president. Fellows *Suddhasatwa Basu * Sudha Bhattacharya * Ch ...

Maharashtra Academy of Sciences Maharashtra Academy of Sciences is a learned society whose head offices are located in Pune, Maharashtra, India. MAS is an exemplary organisation located near Kashele in the Karjat Tribal Block about 100 km east of Bombay. The society was e ...

and the Muslim Association for the Advancement of Science. The

Department of Biotechnology The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is an Indian government department, under the Ministry of Science and Technology responsible for administrating development and commercialisation in the field of modern biology and biotechnology in India. It ...

of the Government of India awarded him the

National Bioscience Award for Career Development The National Bio-science Award for Career Development or N-BIOS Prize is an Indian science award for recognizing excellence and promoting research in bio-sciences disciplines. It was instituted in 1999 by the Department of Biotechnology of the Gov ...

, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences in 2002.

Biography

Born on the

Christmas eve Christmas Eve is the evening or entire day before Christmas Day, the festival commemorating the birth of Jesus. Christmas Day is observed around the world, and Christmas Eve is widely observed as a full or partial holiday in anticipation ...

of 1957, Mohammad Islam Khan obtained an MSc in biotechnology in 1978 and joined the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (IICB) as a faculty, simultaneously doing his doctoral research at the Indian Institute of Science which earned him a PhD in 1986 from

Aligarh Muslim University Aligarh Muslim University (abbreviated as AMU) is a Public University, public Central University (India), central university in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India, which was originally established by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan as the Muhammadan Anglo-Orie ...

. Moving to the US, he did his post-doctoral work at Albert Einstein College of Medicine during 1987–90 and on his return to India in 1990, he joined the

(NCL) as a scientist where he spent the rest of his career, barring a stint at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

during 2000–01 as an overseas associate of the

. He was holding the post of a scientist at the Division of Biochemical Sciences of NCL when he died in November 2010, aged 53.

Legacy

Khan was known for his contributions in the disciplines of

glycobiology Defined in the narrowest sense, glycobiology is the study of the structure, biosynthesis, and biology of saccharides (sugar chains or glycans) that are widely distributed in nature. Sugars or saccharides are essential components of all living thing ...

and

nanobiotechnology Nanobiotechnology, bionanotechnology, and nanobiology are terms that refer to the intersection of nanotechnology and biology. Given that the subject is one that has only emerged very recently, bionanotechnology and nanobiotechnology serve as blan ...

with special focus on the biology of lectins. His work was known to have assisted in widening our understanding of cell adhesion. He demonstrated the role of yeast cell surface lectins in the adhesion of yeast cells which is also known as

flocculation Flocculation, in the field of chemistry, is a process by which colloidal particles come out of suspension to sediment under the form of floc or flake, either spontaneously or due to the addition of a clarifying agent. The action differs from pr ...

. He isolated

Fusarium sporotrichioides ''Fusarium sporotrichioides'' is a fungus, fungal plant pathogen, one of various ''Fusarium'' species responsible for damaging crops, in particular causing a condition known as Fusarium head blight in wheat, consequently being of notable agricult ...

from

rose A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be ...

plant which has since been deposited by him at the National Collection of Industrial Microorganisms (NCIM), a government-funded microbial culture repository based at NCL. The research team under his leadership was successful in isolating a peptide from

Streptomyces ''Streptomyces'' is the largest genus of Actinomycetota and the type genus of the family Streptomycetaceae. Over 500 species of ''Streptomyces'' bacteria have been described. As with the other Actinomycetota, streptomycetes are gram-positive, ...

that showed potency as an inhibitor of

Cysteine protease Cysteine proteases, also known as thiol proteases, are hydrolase enzymes that degrade proteins. These proteases share a common catalytic mechanism that involves a nucleophilic cysteine thiol in a catalytic triad or dyad. Discovered by Gopal Chund ...

s and the finding is reported to have use in the prophylaxis of cancer by preventing the migration of cancer cells. Towards the latter part of his career, he worked on ''the synthesis of metal‑metal sulphides/metal oxide nanoparticles'' using fungi and it was reported that the team synthesized the nano-particles outside a cell for the first time. His studies have been documented by way of a number of articles and

PubMed PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintain the ...

, an online article repository of scientific articles has listed several of them.uthor">

Awards and honors

The Indian National Science Academy awarded Khan the INSA Young Scientist Medal in 1987. Five years later, he received the 1992 Young Scientist Award of the

Council of Scientific and Industrial Research The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (IAST: ''vaigyanik tathā audyogik anusandhāna pariṣada''), abbreviated as CSIR, was established by the Government of India in September 1942 as an autonomous body that has emerged as the l ...

. The

of the Government of India awarded him the

, one of the highest Indian science awards in 2002. He also received the elected fellowships from three Indian science academies namely, the

, Muslim Association for the Advancement of Science and

Selected bibliography

* * *

Notes

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Khan, Mohammad Islam N-BIOS Prize recipients Indian scientific authors Indian molecular biologists Fellows of The National Academy of Sciences, India Scientists from Pune Indian Institute of Science alumni Aligarh Muslim University alumni Albert Einstein College of Medicine alumni University of Göttingen 1957 births 2010 deaths Indian biochemists