King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

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Magdy M. Mahfouz 

Professor of Bioengineering, Bioscience, and Plant Science

Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division 
Center membership :
Center for Desert Agriculture


Laboratory for Genome Engineering and Synthetic Biology

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Affiliations

Education Profile

  • ​​​​​​Ph.D. Molecular Genetics, The Ohio State University, Columbus Ohio, USA 2004
  • M.S. Microbial Genetics, Cairo University, Cairo Egypt, 1997

Research Interests

Bioengineering is a multidisciplinary field that depends on the cross-fertilization of knowledge and advances in the diverse fields of biology, molecular biology, computational biology, engineering, and chemistry. It empowers us to harness these advances, translate ideas into products, and address grand challenges facing humanity. Mahfouz's research group focuses on biomanufacturing, using plants as chassis for bioproduction of select compounds of value, including therapeutics and biopharmaceutical, crop bioengineering using CRISPR systems, and molecular diagnostics of pathogens. The motto of his laboratory, "bioengineering for the future", encapsulates his ideas, beliefs, and goals.

Selected Publications

  • Ahmed Mahas, Tin Marsic, Mauricio Lopez-Portillo Masson, Qiaochu Wang, Rashid Aman, Cheng Zheng, Zahir Ali, Madain Alsanea, Ahmed Al-Qahtani, Bernard Ghanem, Fatimah Alhamlan, Magdy Mahfouz (2022). Characterization of a thermostable Cas13 enzyme for one-pot detection of SARS-CoV-2. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119, 28.

  • Tin Marsic, Zahir Ali, Muhammad Tehseen, Ahmed Mahas, Samir Hamdan, and Magdy M. Mahfouz* (2021). Vigilant: An Engineered VirD2-Cas9 Complex for Lateral Flow Assay-Based Detection of SARS-CoV2. Nano Letters 2021 21 (8), 3596-3603.

  • Zahir Ali, Ashwag Shami, Khalid Sedeek, Radwa Kamel, Abdulrahman Alhabsi, Muhammed Tehseen, Norhan Hassan, Haroon Butt, Ahad Kababji, Samir Hamdan andMagdy M. Mahfouz* (2020). Fusion of the Cas9 endonuclease and the VirD2 relaxes facilitates homology-directed repair for precise genome engineering in rice. Communications Biology 2020 Jan 23; 3(1):44.

  • Ahmed Mahas, Rashid Aman, and Magdy Mahfouz* (2019) CRISPR-Cas13d mediates robust RNA virus interference in plants. Genome Biology, Dec 2; 20(1):263. doi: 10.1186/s13059-019-1881-2

  • Rashid Aman, Zahir Ali, Haroon Butt, Ahmed Mahas, Fatimah Aljedaani, M. Zuhaib Khan, Shouwei Ding, and Magdy M. Mahfouz*(2018) RNA virus interference via CRISPR/Cas13a system in plants. Genome Biology 19: (1). P1-9 (DOI 10.1186/s13059-017-1381-1)