Profile
Dr. Shams Yazdani is a Group Leader of the Microbial Engineering group at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in New Delhi, India. He holds a BSc (Hons) degree in Chemistry from Aligarh Muslim University and MSc and PhD degree in Biotechnology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His early career research led to the development of technologies for the production of recombinant streptokinase and recombinant malaria vaccine candidates, which were transferred to industries for cGMP production, clinical trials and commercialization. He was further involved in a breakthrough discovery during his research at Rice University, Houston, USA, where a novel pathway was identified in E. coli to produce bioethanol from glycerin, a waste from the biodiesel industry. He is the author of more than 100 publications in high-impact international journals with >5100 citations. He has in his name 15 patent applications (3-US patents, 1-Chinese, 3-Indian patents granted).
Current Focus Areas
Recent focus includes the development of the most potent enzyme preparation for use in the 2G-ethanol process with the use of synthetic biology and genome editing tools in fungal systems. This enzyme technology has been scaled up to 15,000L for further commercialization.
His group is also making effort in genome and protein engineering that led to the highest reported value of drop-in fuel alkane in the bacterial system.
Some other research work includes engineered production of cetaryl alcohol and butanediol to replace the petrochemical derived product
Selected Publications
1. Randhawa A, A Ogunyewo O, Jawed K, Yazdani SS. 2024. Calcium signaling positively regulates cellulase translation and secretion in a Clr-2-overexpressing, catabolically derepressed strain of Penicillium funiculosum. Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts. 17(1):1-7.
2. Okereke OE, Gupta M, Ogunyewo OA, Sharma K, Yazdani SS. 2023. Profiling of the β-glucosidases identified in the genome of Penicillium funiculosum: Insights from genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and homology modelling studies. Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 89(9):e00704-23.
3. Dev C, Jilani SB, Yazdani SS. 2022. Adaptation on xylose improves glucose-xylose co-utilization and ethanol production in a carbon catabolite repression (CCR) compromised ethanologenic strain. Microbial Cell Factories. 21:154.
4. Jawed K, Abdelaal AS, Koffas MAG, Yazdani SS. 2020. Improved Butanol Production Using FASII Pathway in E. coli. ACS Synthetic Biology. 9(9):2390-2398.
5. Shakeel T, Gupta M, Fatma Z, Kumar R, Kumar R, Singh R, Sharma M, Jade D, Gupta D, Fatma T, Yazdani SS. 2018. A consensus-guided approach yields a heat-stable alkane-producing enzyme and identifies residues promoting thermostability. Journal of Biological Chemistry. 293(24):9148-9161.