Doug Allen

Biography

Doug Allen’s research interests include analyzing metabolic networks and fluxes in plants, combining experimental and computational methods. These investigations give insight into plant metabolism, which is important for designing crops to meet future nutritional and chemical feedstock needs. His research focuses on central carbon metabolism, from photosynthetic assimilation to the production of storage reserves in seeds or other tissues, enabling metabolic engineering. He was an early adopter of isotopically nonstationary MFA (INST MFA) strategies, applying them to plants, resulting in multiple studies on leaf and non-foliar photosynthesis. His broader interests in metabolism also include the turnover of storage reserves and the metabolic basis of plant–microbe mutualisms. Doug holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from Iowa State and Purdue University and completed postdoctoral research at Michigan State. He has worked as a process/plant engineer for Archer Daniels Midland Company and as a scientist at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center prior to joining the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, where he is a Member and has been a Principal Investigator since 2010.