Academic Affiliation
Associate Professor, Harrington Department of Bioengineering in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering
Credentials
PhD, 1994, Bath University, England
Bio
Lokesh Joshi, PhD, focuses on the discovery and development of protein-based therapeutics and post-translational modifications on biomolecules, particularly in plants. The goal is development of plant-derived treatments and vaccines. Biotechnology is enabling the identification of increasing numbers of bioactive macromolecules that can be applied to control/prevent various diseases. Various recombinant systems are being employed to produce biologically active recombinant molecules. Dr. Joshi’s current system of choice is plants, because plant-derived recombinant proteins are safer, cheaper and plants are nature’s best bioreactors.Dr. Joshi made a significant breakthrough in demonstrating that plants produce sialylated glycoconjugates containing both N-acetyl-D-neuraminic acid (Neu5Ac) and N-glycolyl-D-neuraminic acid (Neu5Gc). His team’s discovery of sialylated glycoconjugates in plants opens new fields of research in plant biochemistry and biotechnology and raises important questions regarding the biosynthesis, regulation, distribution, and function of SAs in plants. This discovery is also of importance for the path to produce sialylated human glycoconjugates in plants for clinical applications.
Dr. Joshi’s research is directed towards understanding modifications including glycosylation, hydroxylation and phosphorylation on recombinant and endogenous proteins. Metabolic engineering techniques are employed to achieve the desired modifications.
Dr. Joshi is also engineering plants to produce “designer” protein molecules of therapeutic value. Most of these proteins and peptides require specific post-translational modifications for their structural and functional properties. His team utilizes in silico and molecular modeling tools to generate mini-proteins with optimized physical and biological properties.
Dr. Joshi joined Arizona State University in 2000. He received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Bath University, England in 1994 and then joined Boyce Thompson Institute and Cornell University as post-doctoral fellow and research associate.