Dr. Usman Arif is working as an Assistant Professor in Seed Biotechnology lab at CEMB. He has ample experience in working with plant metabolic engineering of plant natural products and/or specialized metabolites which play a pivotal role in plant defense and adaptive response under continue varying environmental conditions. There is limited information available about biosynthetic pathways of majority of the secondary metabolites and his research is focused on to elucidate such pathways by identifying key genes catalyzing rate-limiting steps involved in their biosynthesis. Few of the metabolites under investigation are gossypol and steroidal glycoalkaloids produced in cotton and potato respectively. These metabolites stress-induced and render toxic for humans once their levels surpass upper safety limit. The major goal of his research is to control the metabolite levels in such a way that these are not poisonous for human consumption. To achieve it, combination of transcriptomics, metabolomics, analytical chemistry and molecular biology is being employed and setting up a platform where genetic circuits can be rewired or modulate to increase the directional carbon flux for the synthesis of targeted compound or metabolite.
Dr. Usman Arif earned his PhD from Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden and then continued his postdoc research at The Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. He also worked as researcher at the School of Plant Science, Unversity of Arizona, USA before joining CEMB as faculty member. Dr. Usman has also worked in industry where he was part of team who developed various protocols specific to metabolite analysis by using GC-MS and HPLC. Apart from Science, He is interested in sports, travel, reading and music.

Selected Publications:
1.	Irene Merino , Alexandra O. Guasca , Ales Krmela , Usman Arif , Ashfaq Ali , Erik Westerberg , Siddhi K. Jalmi , Jana Hajslova, Vera Schulzova , Folke Sitbon*. Identification of External Factors and Key Genes Underlying High Levels of Toxic Glycoalkaloids in Tubers of Stresssensitive Potato Cultivars. Frontier in Plant Science. August 2023,  Accepted
2.	Khalid Muhammad, Atif Idrees, Jamshaid Iqbal , Usman Arif , Muhammad Safdar Baloch  , Muhammad Faisal Shahzad , Islem Abid , Mohamed Ragab AbdelGawwad. Prevalence of cattle ticks in various agro-ecological zones of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and evaluation of botanical extracts against Hyalomma detritum. Journal of King Saud University – Science. Volume 35, Issue 6, August 2023,  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1018364723001945
3.	Jorge R. Paredes-Montero, Usman Arif , Judith K. Brown, Knockdown of ecdysteroid synthesis genes results in impaired molting and high mortality in Bactericera cockerelli(Hemiptera: Triozidae. Pest Management Science.  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ps.6848?casa_token=I6dOCPJUPBEAAAAA%3 AIShExxlkPK2HN1fes3icNsCeArjUwh8or0JWxeI9fsVSSgPs923WQHbXWiPtvLfl6acCc2NKeVQE5Fk
4.	Nuran Nahar, Erik V. Petersson, Usman Arif, Lisa Beste, Kerstin Dahlman, Paresh Dutta, Lisbeth Jonsson, Folke Sitbon, 2017. Transcript profiling of two potato cultivars during glycoalkaloid inducing treatments shows differential expression of genes in sterol and glycoalkaloid metabolism. Nature/Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/srep43268. http://www.nature.com/articles/srep43268
5.	Usman Arif#, Erik V. Petersson#, Vera Schulzova, Veronika Krtkova, Jana Hajslova, Johan Meijer, Hans Christer Andersson, Lisbeth Jonsson, Folke Sitbon, 2013. Glycoalkaloid and Calystegine levels in table potato cultivars subjected to wounding, light and heat treatments. Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry. DOI: 10.1021/jf400318p (#Joint first author). http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf400318p
6.	Kadri Just, Usman Arif, Anne Luik, Anders Kvarnheden, 2016. Monitoring infection of tomato fruit by Tomato yellow leaf curl virus. Plant Pathology. DOI: 10. 1111/ppa. 12596. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ppa.12596/abstract
7.	Kadri Just, Muhammad Naeem Sattar, Usman Arif, Anne Luik, Anders Kvarnheden, 2017. Infectivity of Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Virus isolated from imported tomato fruit in Estonia. Zemdirbyste-Agriculture 104: 47-52. http://www.zemdirbyste-agriculture.lt/1041_str7/
8.	FirstreportofTomato leaf curl New Delhi virus infecting tomato and cucumber in Estonia. K.Just, R.Allika, P.vanderSman, Arif, B.Ilau, R.Koidumaa, H.Lasner, V.Ermakovich, J.Bukštunovitš, A.Kvarnheden. 2022. New Disease Reports. Volume 45. E12083
9.	Zahida Qamar1,*,..Usman Arif13, Khurram Bashir14, Arshad Jamal15, Shahid Javed Butt9, Asif Arif16, Irshad Ahmad17, Abdul Qayyum Rao1, Muhammad Saleem Haider18, Tassawar Hussain Malik19, Idrees Ahmad Nasir1Trackable CEMB-Klean Cotton Transgenic Technology: Affordable Climate Neutral Agri-biotech Industrialization for Developing Countries. Advancement in Life Sciences. life sci., vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 131-138, May 2019. http://www.als-journal.com/638-19/
10.	Effect of wounding and light exposure on sterol, glycoalkaloid, and calystegine levels in potato plants (Solanum tuberosum group Tuberosum). Arif, Usman (2013). Diss. (sammanfattning/summary) Uppsala: Sveriges lantbruksuniv, Acta Universitatis agriculturae Sueciae, 1652-6880; 2013:45 ISBN 978-91-576-7829-4.