Binu Antony

Dr. Binu Antony is an Associate Professor of insect molecular biology at the King Saud University, Riyadh, KSA. His current research is in the area of animal communication, in particular, focus on the insect pheromones and olfaction, to understand the complexity of pheromone biosynthesis aspects to the molecular basis of odorant detection and olfactory processing, and their applications - in vitro production of pheromone and designing biosensors for the pheromone-based monitoring. Dr. Antony and his team have won the prestigious Khalifa International Award for Date Palm and Agricultural Innovation - 2017 for the research on red palm weevil, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, was able to identify olfactory genes from red palm weevil and developed gene silencing approaches to knock it down, so that the insects cannot smell the pheromones, leading to the communication failure. His current research activities include Palm weevil functional genomics of odorant receptors (ORs) and odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) - development of OR/OBP-based biosensors. Apart from this, he is currently working on palm weevil olfactory (pheromone) signal processing, pheromone degrading enzymes, cytochrome P450s and insecticide resistance, and RPW genome. He has authored or co-authored several journal publications and won nine fellowships, with the latest being awarded by the Royal Entomological Society of London.