PESHAWAR: Babar Nawaz, a resident of Landi Kotal in Khyber Agency and student of biotechnology department at University of Peshawar, has brought laurel to Pakistan in an international bioscience competition.

The competition titled ‘International Genetic Engineered Machine’ was recently held in the US city of Boston, University of Massachusetts.

Babar Nawaz along with his six other colleagues, one each from Faisalabad, Lahore, Attock and three from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, won silver medal by genetically engineering ‘a reporter fish’ built by DNA circuit to detect heavy metals in fresh water.

Mr Nawaz said that he used to attend seminars and workshops and was interested in scientific discoveries. “My schoolteachers had inspired me to catch up with my own ideas and since then I used to read profiles of scientists. I hope people will support me to materialise my dreams,” he added.

Babar Nawaz’s team develops ‘reporter fish’ to detect heavy metals in water

The young scientist said that detection of heavy metals was difficult but they aspired to solve the problem by engineering a reporter fish, which could detect five kinds of metals and change colour.

He said that the heavy metals included mercury (Hg), cadmium (Cd), arsenic (As), chromium (Cr), thallium (Tl) and lead (Pb). Being natural components of crust of the earth, those cannot be degraded or destroyed. To a small extent they enter human body with the intake of food, drinking water and air.

The reporter fish can detect five different kinds of heavy metals in fresh water, the Arduino-based human bacterial interface device enabling for the first time to send the human scientist a text message.

Mr Nawaz was among the other talented students, who after fourth-month brainstorming were invited to US to participate in international science competition. Around 300 teams from 50 countries presented different ideas at the competition to find out viable solutions to various local, national and international issues regarding environment and human health.

Under the supervision of Prof Faisal Khan, head of Peshawar’s Institute of Integrative Biosciences (IBB) of CECOS University of IT and Emerging Sciences, the seven-member team comprising Babar Nawaz Shinwari, Ayesha, Mohammad Hassan Raza, Mohammad Daud, Hasnain Qasim, Umar Farooq and Haris Alam represented Pakistan in the competition held from November 9 to 13 and won great appreciation from around 6,000 young participants.

Prof Faisal said that youth had great potential so entrepreneurs and industrialists should invest in their strength. He said that the Peshawar team received an overwhelming response from the audience for its unique idea to find a solution to heavy metal contaminated water.

Mr Nawaz said that keeping in view the worst condition of water resources in Pakistan, their team arrived at the conclusion that they should plan out a project on finding a viable solution to detect heavy metals in water.

He said that first they built a DNA circuit zebra fish and then attached a small chip to its body with colour senor.

“Our project team comprised an electrical engineer, a software engineer, a civil engineer and a biotech expert, being myself. We displayed our project with great confidence in front of a huge crowd of young scientist and got a standing ovation for our wonderful achievement,” he said with beaming face.

Prof Khalid Khan, a teacher of Babar Nawaz, told this scribe that Mr Nawaz had been an expressive student from the very beginning and would always put questions regarding scientific facts. He said such students needed a little bit push to bring out their talent.

Mr Nawaz appealed to President of Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governor and Haji Shaji Gul, MNA from Khyber Agency, to extend financial support to him as he hailed from a poor family.

He said that he was a student of the fifth semester of biotechnology discipline and could not pay for rest of amount Rs400,000 as fee at the university. Talking about his future plans, he said he wanted to do doctorate from abroad in his own discipline.

Published in Dawn, December 12th, 2017