Dr Fouzia Bano

Fouzia Bano is a Senior Research Engineer in the lab of Marta Bally at the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Wallenberg Centre for Molecular Medicine, Umeå University (Sweden).

Fouzia’s current research focuses on elucidating the role of cell surface carbohydrates, also known as glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), in virus entry. Sulphated GAGs such as heparan sulphate are highly negatively charged oligosaccharides that play a critical role in modulating the kinetics (attachment/detachment) and diffusion behaviours of many viruses including human papillomavirus (HPV), herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) and adenoviruses at the cell surface. Using a cell-surface mimic platform in combination with single-molecule techniques such as single particle tracking by total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) based single molecule force spectroscopy (SMFS), Fouzia is researching two major questions: (1) which factors regulate virus-GAG interactions and (2) what is the role of multivalency in virus-GAGs interactions?

Considering her passion for AFM imaging over the years of her research career, she was/is also involved in various projects to understand how biomolecules assemble on surfaces (Refs # 1 and 2).  

Fouzia Bano (photocredit Chloé Jacquet)

Recent AFM-related paper:

• Szuba A., Bano F., Castro-Linares G., Iv F., Mavrakis M., Richter R. P, Bertin A. & Koenderink G. H., (2021) Membrane binding controls ordered self-assembly of animal septins, elifesciences (1)

• Bano F., Carril M., Di Gianvincenzo P. &Richter R. P. (2015) Interaction of Hyaluronan with Cationic Nanoparticles Langmuir. 31 (30), 8411-8420. (2)

• Bano F., Tammi M. I., Kang D.W., Harris E.N. & Richter R.P. (2018) Single-Molecule Unbinding Forces between the Polysaccharide Hyaluronan and Its Binding Proteins Biophysical Journal 114 (12), 2910-2922. (3)

• Bano F., Banerji S., Howarth M, Jackson D. G. & Richter R. P. (2016) A single molecule assay to probe monovalent and multivalent bonds between hyaluronan and its key leukocyte receptor CD44 under force Scientific Reports, 6 (34176) (4)

Biography: With a master’s degree in Physics from the University of Punjab (Pakistan), Fouzia received her PhD degree in Statistical and Biological Physics from SISSA (Italy) in 2009 with a focus on developing DNA/proteins biosensors based on AFM nanolithography methods under the supervision of Giacinto Scoles and Loredana Casalis. She then joined Duwez’s group in 2010 at the University of Liege (Belgium) to learn and implement AFM SMFS for developing advanced DNA biosensors. In 2013, she joined Richter Lab at CIC biomaGUNE (Spain) and the University of Leeds (UK) in 2016 for investigating the dynamics of polysaccharide and protein complexes using AFM SMFS and surface-based analytical methods (Refs # 3 and 4).

Twitter: @fouzia_bano

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fbano/

Websites: https://www.umu.se/en/staff/fouzia-bano/

https://ballylab.com/

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Are you a woman conducting AFM research or know of someone you would like to nominate to be featured in our next #WomenInAFM campaign? Contact us at community@nunano.com!

Also, check out our previous March and November 2021 Women in AFM blog posts to read about more researchers.

Why are we celebrating women in AFM? (March 2021)

Why do we need to highlight women in AFM? (Nov 2021)