Dennis Bong

Dennis Bong is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The Ohio State University, where he has been since 2004. His research focuses on organic synthesis and biochemistry, particularly the chemical biology of nucleic acids. He investigates synthetic nucleic acid assemblies like bPNAs (bifacial peptide nucleic acids) for applications in nucleic acid delivery, biosensing, and modulation of nucleic acid function.

Education: BSc in Chemistry from UC Berkeley (with Prof. K. Peter C. Vollhardt), PhD from The Scripps Research Institute (with Prof. M. Reza Ghadiri), and postdoctoral training at Columbia University (with Prof. Ronald Breslow).

Research Interests: Development of synthetic molecules for nucleic acid recognition, triplex hybridization with melamine bases, and applications in RNA/DNA tracking, drug delivery, and ribozyme regulation. Current projects include fluorogenic tagging of nucleic acids and hepatocyte-targeted siRNA silencing.

Labs/Teams: Bong Research Lab at Ohio State, focused on nucleic acid chemistry and biomolecular engineering. The lab actively seeks graduate students for projects in synthetic biology and chemical biology.