- 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 (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
- 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
- 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
- Royal Society of Canada bestows Dr. Vocadlo with country’s highest academic honour
- 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
- Decoding the genome to predict the clinical course of lymphomas
- Reflecting on barriers and progress towards equity in science
- 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
- Support MBB
- Faculty + Staff Portal
Christopher Beh
Areas of interest
Cell growth is dictated in large part by the bustling traffic of molecular cargo moving between different membranes within cells. Fats and lipids are perhaps the most difficult cargo to transport. Like oil on water, fats and lipids do not mix well with the cell’s internal fluid and require specialized transport systems to move around. Cholesterol transport represents a good example of this complication. Cholesterol is made within internal membranes and must be transferred to the cell surface, but how it moves is not well understood. Proteins inserted into membranes also present a problem for transport within cells. Vesicle carriers, like small bubbles, bud off internal membranes and target embedded membrane proteins to other recipient membranes. How vesicular transport to-and-from the cell surface is coordinated is still not known, but it is an important regulatory mechanism for controlling cell size and growth. All transport mechanisms we study operate in yeast as well as humans, so we have chosen to exploit the advantages of yeast molecular genetic techniques for manipulating cells. Yeast cells represent simple versions of our own cells, so what we learn in yeast can be applied to understanding transport within human cells.
Education
- B.Sc., Biochemistry, and M.Sc., Medical Science (Developmental Biology), University of Calgary
- Ph.D., Molecular Biology, Princeton University
- Post-doc, University of California, Berkeley
Selected Publications
- Quon E, Nenadic A, Zaman MF, Johansen J, Beh CT. (2022). ER-PM membrane contact site regulation by yeast ORPs and membrane stress pathways. PLoS Genet. 18(3):e1010106. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1010106
- Zaman MF, Nenadic A, Radojičić A, Rosado A, Beh CT (2020). Sticking With It: ER-PM Membrane Contact Sites as a Coordinating Nexus for Regulating Lipids and Proteins at the Cell Cortex. PLoS Biol. 16(5):e2003864. Front Cell Dev Biol. 2020 Jul 22;8:675. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2020.00675
- Quon E, Sere YY, Chauhan N, Johansen J, Sullivan DP, Dittman JS, Rice WJ, Chan RB, Di Paolo G, Beh CT, Menon AK (2018). Endoplasmic reticulum-plasma membrane contact sites integrate sterol and phospholipid regulation. PLoS Biol. 16(5):e2003864. PLoS Biol 2018
- Johansen, J. et al. Polarized exocytosis induces compensatory endocytosis by Sec4p-regulated cortical actin polymerization. PLoS Biol 2016
- Quon E, Beh CT. (2016) Membrane Contact Sites: Complex Zones for Membrane Association and Lipid Exchange. Lipid Insights. 8(Suppl 1):55-63. Lipid Insights 2016
- View more publications
Courses
Spring 2025
Future courses may be subject to change.