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.