Dena Francis

Dr. Deanne Francis is a lecturer in the college of public health, medicine, and vet sciences in the molecular biology department at James Cook University. She has extensive experience using the model organism, Drosophila melanogaster to investigate questions in developmental biology, genetics, physiology, and metabolism.

Dr. Francis obtained her Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology from the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. Her Ph.D. focused on how connections between different epithelial tubes within the fruit fly larval respiratory system are maintained during growth and development. She did her postdoctoral research with Prof David James in the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. Dr. Francis studied how diet and genetic predisposition interact to affect metabolic traits. She performed a genome-wide association study in flies, to look for genetic variants that affect energy storage and utilization in response to diet.

Her current interest includes understanding the effects of diet on sleep quality and the molecular-genetic responses to heat stress.