Angela E. Douglas

My research interests are symbiosis and nutritional physiology. The three strands to my research are intracellular microbial symbioses in insects; beneficial gut microbes in insects, especially Drosophila; and insect nutrition.

I joined Cornell University in 2008 as the Daljit S. and Elaine Sarkaria Professor of Insect Physiology and Toxicology. Before that, I was a member of faculty at the University of York, UK (1996 senior lecturer, 1999 reader, 2003 professor); aRoyal Society University Research Fellow (1986-1996); and I did postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford and University of East Anglia. I obtained a PhD at the University of Aberdeen, UK (1981) and BA (zoology) at the University of Oxford, UK (1978). My CV is available as a a download on the left sidebar of this page.

 I am interested in how insects work. My core research area is insect nutritional physiology (how insects process food for growth and reproduction), including the contribution of symbiotic microorganisms to insect nutrition. The three current research foci in the laboratory are: Insect-plant interactions, especially nutrition of plant sap-feeding insects.  We are addressing how the insects process two classes of plant nutrients: sugars, which are both the dominant carbon source and osmotic challenge for these insects; and sterols, which are essential component of cell membranes and precursor of insect ecdysteroid hormones. Our research includes interference with the function of insect sugar processing genes and studies of modified plants with altered sterol content, as novel control strategy for phloem-feeding insect pests. The obligate intracellular symbioses in insects. We focus almost entirely on the symbiosis between aphids and the bacterium Buchnera, which is supported by excellent genomic resources and is amenable to nutritional physiological techniques. We have demonstrated that Buchnera provide aphids with essential amino acids, nutrients in short supply in the aphid diet of plant phloem sap. Currently, we are seeking to identify key genes mediating the interactions between insect and bacteria and to establish their mode of action. This involves mining genomes for candidate genes, metabolic reconstruction, transcriptome and proteome analysis and the physiology of nutrient utilization by insects and isolated bacteria. We are motivated by the fundamental problem of how the bacteria have become integrated into the physiological system of the insect, and by the potential of key symbiosis genes as targets for insect pest management. Drosophila-gut microbe interactions. We are investigating the composition of the gut microbiota by molecular and microbiological methods, and how the presence and composition of the microbiota interacts with the nutritional condition and immunological function of the insect.   Our purpose is to use this association, as a general model system for animal-gut microbe interactions.