- About
- People
- Faculty
- Tim Audas
- Christopher Beh
- Lorena Braid
- Fiona S.L. Brinkman
- Mark Brockman
- Jonathan Choy
- Lisa Craig
- Sharon Gorski
- Nicholas Harden
- Nancy Hawkins
- Robert Holt
- William Hsiao
- Valentin Jaumouillé
- Lisa Julian
- Dustin King
- Irina Kovalyova
- Mani Larijani
- Amy Lee
- Michel Leroux
- Ryan Morin
- Ingrid Northwood
- Mark Paetzel
- Frederic Pio
- Lynne Quarmby
- Dheva Setiaputra
- Michael Silverman
- Sophie Sneddon
- Glen Tibbits
- Peter Unrau
- Esther Verheyen
- Stephanie Vlachos
- David Vocadlo
- Edgar Young
- Emeritus Faculty
- Associate Members
- Adjunct Faculty
- Research Personnel
- Graduate & Postdocs
- Staff
- Department Committees
- Faculty
- Undergraduate
- Prospective Students
- Admission & Transferring
- Degree Programs
- MBB Co-op Program
- Careers in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
- Scholarships & Funding
- Student Stories
- Contact Us
- Current Students
- Advising
- Courses
- Degree Programs
- MBB Co-op Program
- Research Opportunities
- Scholarship & Funding
- Student Resources
- Prospective Students
- Graduate
- Prospective Students
- Current Students
- Manage Your Program
- Degree Requirements
- Courses
- Course Descriptions
- Course Offerings
- Spring (1251)
- Spring (1241)
- Summer (1244)
- Fall (1247)
- Spring (1231)
- Summer (1234)
- Fall (1237)
- Spring (1221)
- Summer (1224)
- Fall (1227)
- Fall (1217)
- Summer (1214)
- Spring (1211)
- Fall (1207)
- Summer (1204)
- Spring (1201)
- Fall (1197)
- Summer (1194)
- Spring (1191)
- Fall (1187)
- Summer (1184)
- Spring (1181)
- Fall (1177)
- Summer (1174)
- Spring (1171)
- Fall (1167)
- Summer (1164)
- Spring (1161)
- Fall (1157)
- Summer (1154)
- Spring (1151)
- Funding and Awards
- Forms And Resources
- Events
- Graduate Student Caucus
- Research
- Research Labs
- Audas Lab
- Beh Lab
- Braid lab
- Brinkman Lab
- Brockman Lab
- Chen Lab
- Choy Lab
- Craig Lab
- Gorski Lab
- Harden Lab
- Hawkins Lab
- Holt Lab
- Hsiao Lab
- Jaumouillé Lab
- King Lab
- Larijani Lab
- Lee Lab
- Leroux Lab
- Morin Lab
- Paetzel Lab
- Pio Lab
- Quarmby Lab
- Sen Lab
- Setiaputra Lab
- Silverman Lab
- Thewalt Lab
- Tibbits Lab
- Unrau Lab
- Verheyen Lab
- Vocadlo Lab
- Young Lab
- Bioinformatics & Genomics
- Cells & Disease
- Infection & Immunity
- Macromolecular Biochemistry
- Undergraduate Research Opportunities
- C2D2 Centre for Cell Biology, Development, and Disease
- Omics Data Science Initiative
- Recent Publications
- Research Labs
- Resources
- News & Events
- Seminars
- MBB Calendar
- Colloquia
- Honours & Awards
- News Archives
- 2024
- Fiona Brinkman Recognized with Excellence in Science Public Engagement, Communication & Outreach Award
- Lionel Pereira receives Faculty of Science Graduate Student Excellence in Teaching Award
- Scientists develop tool to predict sepsis in apparently healthy newborns
- Dr. Lynne Quarmby, cool new discoveries about Watermelon Snow
- Dr. Valentin Jaumouillé and Dr. Amy Lee, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry researchers receive Michael Smith Health Research BC Scholar awards
- Dr. Ryan Morin has been honored with the Bernard and Francine Dorval Prize from the Canadian Cancer Society
- Verheyen Lab breakthrough identifies gene that may reverse Parkinson’s disease
- MBB researchers awarded $2 million in funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research
- Dr. Glen Tibbits honoured as Distinguished SFU Professor
- Reflecting on barriers and progress towards equity in science
- Royal Society of Canada bestows Dr. Vocadlo with country’s highest academic honour
- Decoding the genome to predict the clinical course of lymphomas
- 2023 Award for Excellence in Supervision: Esther Verheyen
- In a recent Nature Communications paper, the Audas lab demonstrates that proteins can act as microscopic thermometers to sense and respond to changing environmental conditions
- 2023
- Dr. Dustin King speaks to Molecular Cell about sustainability and molecular biology
- Science Advances paper by new MBB PhD, Casey Engstrom and Professor Lynne Quarmby uses satellites to study the impact of Watermelon Snow on glacier loss in North America
- Dr. Sathiyaseelan and team explore the expression and therapeutic target potential of cysteine protease ATG4 in pancreatic cancer
- 2022
- 2021
- 2020
- 2019
- 2018
- 2017
- 2016
- 2015
- 2024
- Science Rendezvous
- MBB Halloween
- Support MBB
- Faculty + Staff Portal
Dipankar Sen
Areas of interest
A major and long-term interest of my research program is to gain a deep understanding of the catalytic possibilities of DNA and RNA. Astonishing recent discoveries in the biology of RNA (such as riboswitches and miRNA) have shown it to be anything but a passive carrier of genetic information. Indeed, the existence of ribozymes (catalytic RNAs) has long bolstered the notion of an “RNA World”, an early stage in evolution in which RNA was responsible for both informational and catalytic functions within organisms. A focus of my lab is to search for new and often unexpected catalytic properties of RNA (and of its surrogate, DNA). We are one of only a few labs in the world that specialize in this area; however, our key papers have contributed to new thinking about primordial biochemistry, the de novo design of biocatalysts, and generated often unexpected practical applications, particularly in the field of biosensing.
Education
- B.A., Cambridge University
- M.Phil., Ph.D., Yale University
Selected Publications
- Cernak, P. and Sen, D. (2013) A Thiamin-Utilizing Ribozyme Decarboxylates a Pyruvate-like Substrate. Nature Chemistry 5: 971-977. [Featured in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/science/vitamins-old-old-edge.html?_r=0 ]
- Huang, Y. C. and Sen, D. (2014) A Twisting Electronic Nanoswitch made of DNA. Angewandte Chemie53: 14055-14059.
- Grigg, J. C., Shumayrikh, N., and Sen, D. (2014) G-Quadruplex Structures Formed by Expanded Hexanucleotide Repeat RNA and DNA from the Neurodegenerative Disease-Linked C9orf72 Gene Efficiently Sequester and Activate Heme. PLOS One 9(9):e106449.
- View more publications
Courses
This instructor is currently not teaching any courses.