Leukocyte Signalling & Gene Expression

BIOGRAPHY

CURRENT POSITIONS:
• Chief: Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Biology, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health
• Chief: Gene Regulation Section, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health

EDUCATION:
Dr Sen received his PhD in chemistry from Columbia University in 1982. He made the transition to molecular biology as a postdoctoral fellow in David Baltimore's laboratory at MIT and the Whitehead Institute.

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
B and T cell differentiation share several common features. B lymphopoiesis takes place in the bone marrow where environmental cues commit multipotent cells to the B lineage. Close to the point of lineage commitment gene rearrangements are initiated at the immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) gene locus. Activation of the locus and subsequent V(D)J recombination is regulated in complex ways, and one of our objectives is to understand the molecular mechanisms that underlie this complexity. A parallel pathway operates in the thymus where multipotent cells commit to the T lineage. One important consequence is the activation and recombination of T cell receptor (TCR) b chain genes. The TCRb gene enhancer has been shown to be essential in this process and we have used it to probe this differentiation step.