Dena Francis

Dr. Dena Francis is a lecturer in the college of medicine and dentistry 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 working with A/Prof Amin Ghabrial. Her Ph.D. focused on how connections between different epithelial tubes within the D. melanogaster larval respiratory system are maintained during growth and development. She did her postdoctoral research with Prof David James at the University of Sydney. Dr. Francis studied how diet and genetic predisposition interact to affect metabolic traits. She completed a genome-wide association study in flies, to identify genetic variants associated with energy storage and utilization in response to diet.