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Imroze Khan

Assistant Dean, Research and Associate Professor of Biology, Ashoka University

DBT-Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellow,
Ph.D. IISER Kolkata

Imroze is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Ashoka University. He is an evolutionary biologist with a special focus on understanding the selective forces that determine adaptive evolution of immune responses. His research combines diverse approaches – the use of experimental evolution and life history analyses, physiological and molecular manipulations to assess evolutionary and ecological outcomes. Among his other interests is to study the parallelism between evolutionary concepts and the cultural history of the world, and integrating the two within the framework of liberal education. He believes that evolutionary biology is a discipline that easily straddles the domains of natural sciences and humanities: it is a subject with historical implications and often has to grapple with the challenge of having to derive logical inferences from natural ‘experiments’ without the luxury of replication in reality, as is the case with history.

He did his Bachelors in Chemistry at St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta and Masters in Biochemistry at University of Calcutta. He did his doctoral studies in Evolutionary Biology at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata. Before joining Ashoka, Imroze was a postdoctoral fellow at National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore and a visiting researcher at the Free University of Berlin.

* Corresponding author; #Equal Contribution

(Lab members highlighted in bold)

Published articles

  • Prakash A, Fenner F, Shit B, Salminen TS, Monteith KM, Khan IVale P (2024). IMD-mediated innate immune priming increases Drosophila survival and reduces pathogen transmission. PLOS Pathogens Ι online access
  • Prakash A, Agashe D & Khan I* (2023). Disruption of flour beetle microbiota limits experimentally evolved immune priming response, but not pathogen resistance. Journal of Evolutionary Biology |  online access
  • Shit B, Prakash A*, Sarkar S, Vale P & Khan I * (2022). Ageing leads to nonspecific antimicrobial peptide responses in Drosophila melanogaster. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 289, 20221642 | online access
  • Dharmarajan G*, Chanda E , Dean KR, Dirzo R , Jakobsen KS , Khan I, Leirs H , Shi Z , Wolfe ND , Yang R & Stenseth NC (2022). The zoonotic origin of major human infectious diseases. Zoonoses. 2, 11 Ι online access
  • Prakash A, Agashe D* & Khan I* (2022) The cost and benefits of basal infection resistance vs diverse immune priming responses in an insect. Developmental and Comparative Immunology. 126, 104261 | online access
  • Prakash A* & Khan I* (2021). Why do insects evolve immune priming? A search for crossroads. Developmental and Comparative Immunology (In press) (online access)
  • Seal S*, Dharmarajan G & Khan I* (2021). Evolution of pathogen tolerance and emerging infections: A missing experimental paradigm. eLife (In press) (online preprint)
  • Bagchi B, Seal S, Raina M, Basu D, Khan I* (2021). Carcass scavenging relaxes chemical -driven female interference competition in flour beetles. The American Naturalist (In press) (online preprint)
  • Bagchi B#, Corbel Q#, Khan I#, Payne E#, Banerji D, Liljestrand-Rönn J, Martinossi-Allibert I, Baur J, Immonen E, Sayadi A, Arnqvist G, Söderhäll I & Berger D* (2021). Sexual conflict drives micro- and macroevolution of  sexual dimorphism in immunity. BMC Biology. 19 (114). 00-00 (online access) (Joint 1st author)
  • Khan I*, Prakash A and Agashe D* (2019). Pathogen susceptibility and fitness costs explain variation in immune priming across natural populations of flour beetles. Journal of Animal Ecology (online access)
  • Khan I, Prakash A, Issar S, Umarani M, Sashidharan R, N Jagadeesh, Lama P, Venkatesan R & Agashe D* (2018). Female density-dependent chemical warfare underlies fitness effects of group sex ratio in flour beetles. The American Naturalist. 191. 00-00. (pdf)
  • Khan I*, Prakash A and Agashe D* (2017). Experimental evolution of insect immune memory vs. pathogen resistance. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 284: 20171583. (pdf) (Lay summary)
  • Khan I*, Agashe D and Rolff J* (2017). Early life inflammation, immune response and aging. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 284, 20170125 (pdf) (Lay Summary)(Recommended by faculty of 1000)
  • Khan I*#, Prakash A# and Agashe D* (2016)Divergent immune priming responses across life stages and populations of flour beetles. Ecology and Evolution. 6: 7847-7855. (open access) (Lay summary)
  • Khan I*, Prakash A & Agashe D* (2016). Immunosenescence and the ability to fight bacterial infection in red flour beetle Tribolium castaneumJournal of Animal Ecology. 85: 291-301. (pdf) (Lay summary)
  • Chakrabarty A, Bera A, Mukherjee A, Basak P, Khan I, Mondal A, Roy A, Bhattacharyya A, Roy D, Nag S, Ghosh A, Chattopadhyay D & Bhattacharyya M* (2015) Changing bacterial profile of Sundarbans, the World heritage mangrove: Impact of anthropogenic interventions. World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology. 31(4). 593-610. (pdf)
  • Khan I and Prasad NG* (2013) Male Drosophila melanogaster show adaptive mating bias in response to female infection status. Journal of Insect Physiology. 59: 1017-1023.(pdf)
  • Khan I and Prasad NG* (2013) The aging of the immune response in Drosophila melanogaster. Journals of Gerontology: Biological Sciences. 68(2):129-35. (pdf)
  • Khan I and Prasad NG* (2011) Mating with large males decreases the immune defence of females in Drosophila melanogasterJournal of Genetics. 90: 427–434.(pdf)
  • Khan I and Prasad NG* (2011) Sex-specific effect of bacterial infection on components of adult fitness in Drosophila melanogaster. Journal of Evolutionary Biology Research. 3(6): 79-86.(pdf)
  • Prakash A, Agashe D, Khan I*. Divergent effects of microbiota on evolved immune priming vs resistance in insects

Under review/ revision

  • Shivansh SinghalChhavi Choudhary, Dipendra Nath Basu, Srijan Seal, Imroze Khan, Jayendra Nath Shukla, Deepa Agashe. Genome assembly and annotation of the red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum) from India | online preprint
  • Seal S*, Basu DN*, Ghosh K, Ramachandran A, Kutum R, Shelke T, Gupta I & Khan I*. Pathogen growth and virulence dynamics drive the host evolution against coinfections | online preprint
  • Sarkar S* & Khan I. Plasticity of immune development with ageing and dietary manipulations | Under review
  • Dharmarajan G , Chanda E , Dean KR, Dirzo R , Jakobsen KS , Khan I, Leirs H , Shi Z , Wolfe ND , Yang R ,  Stenseth NC. The zoonotic origin of major human infectious diseases (under review)
  • Prakash A, Agashe D* & Khan I*. Basal resistance against a pathogen is more beneficial than immune priming responses in flour beetles (minor revision(online preprint)

PhD applicants: I will accept 2 PhD students in 2020. Prospective PhD students can write to me directly for more information.

Postdoc applicants: Currently I do not have a funded postdoctoral position. However, if you are really interested I encourage you to consider various intramural and extramural fellowships and funding sources. I will be more than happy to work with you for your application.

Email imroze.khan@ashoka.edu.in

Phone +91 130 230 0698

PhD students

Basabi Bagchi (2019- present)

Saubhik Sarkar (2018- present)

Srijan Seal (2019- present)

Project Assistant

Biswajit Sit (2019-present)

Undergraduate students

Manasven Raina

Devshuvam Banerji

Shashwat Goyal

Shreya Verma

Study at Ashoka

Study at Ashoka