Frederic Pio

Associate Professor
Molecular Biology & Biochemistry
Science

Areas of interest

We are studying inflammasomes that we discovered in genomics databases which are innate immune system receptors and cytosolic sensors that recognize and sense microbial debris. They produce inflammation in response to infection by microbes and are disregulated in Alzheimer, Parkinson, Cancer, Diabetes chronic diseases. We are using bioinformatics to integrate BIG-OMICS data sets and identify pathways components involved in these processes. Ultimately these developments will point toward promising therapeutics that target inflammasome activity. Our current projects include but are not restricted to:

-Innate immunity pathway discovery in C. elegans
-Evolution of Innate immunity pathways
-Drug discovery in silico that target inflammation
-Target identification and validation using C. elegans and other model organisms

Education

  • B.Sc., University of Clermont-Fd II, France
  • Ph.D., Institute Pasteur, University of Lille II, France

Selected Publications

  • Lau D, Dalal K, Hon B, Pio F (2016) Design and Selection of IFI16-PAAD Mutants with Improved dsDNA Destabilization Properties. J Proteomics Bioinform 9: 255-263. doi: 10.4172/jpb.1000414
  • Poon C, Mehot S, Morabi-Pazooki W, Pio F, Bennet A and Sen D. (2011) Guanine-rich RNAs and DNAs that bind hemin robustly catalyze oxygen transfer reactions J Am Chem Soc in press.
  • Tan PP, Dargahi D, and Pio F (2010) Predicting protein complexes by data integration of different types of interactions. Int. J. Computational Biology and Drug Design. 3:19-30
  • Dargahi et al. Bioinformatics analysis identify novel OB fold protein coding genes in C. elegans.
    PLoS One 2013 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23638006
  • View more publications

Important Notice

Dr. Pio is currently looking for PhD positions in 

  • NGS sequencing
  • Bioinformatics
  • C. elegans genomics

Please contact fpio@sfu.ca for details.

Courses

Future courses may be subject to change.