Douglas Allan

Professor

mail dwallan@mail.ubc.ca

call 604-827-5960

location_on 2401

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Research Focus Teams

Rare Diseases, Cancer, Autism, Alzheimer's, Arthritis

Research Interests

Neuroscience

Departments

Zoology

Bio

Douglas W. Allan is currently an associate professor at the University of British Columbia in in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences. He obtained his B.S. Honors and M.S. at Aberdeen University in Scotland. Moving to Canada, he then performed his doctoral thesis at the University of Alberta where he delineated the development of the neuromusculature of breathing and provided the first insights into the causes of congenital diaphragmatic hernia. Moving to Harvard Medical School to perform his postdoctoral work with Stefan Thor, Allan then undertook an analysis of the combinatorial transcriptional coding of neuronal identity in the model system, Drosophila melanogaster. He discovered that neuronal identity in this system was not hardwired by lineage, but instead that retrograde signals from a neuron's synaptic target cell provides a critical instructive input into the combinatorial coding of subtype-specific gene expression, which is critical for the terminal differentiation of neuronal identity and function.

Awards

  • Tula Foundation Investigator (Brain Research Centre)
  • CIHR New Investigator
  • MSFHR Scholar
  • EJLB Scholar

Recent Publications

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Functional Analysis of Human EED Variants Using Drosophila

Adult expression of the cell adhesion protein Fasciclin 3 is required for the maintenance of adult olfactory interneurons

Adult expression of Semaphorins and Plexins is essential for motor neuron survival

Dichotomous cis-regulatory motifs mediate the maturation of the neuromuscular junction by retrograde BMP signaling

The hinge region of the Israeli acute paralysis virus internal ribosome entry site directs ribosomal positioning, translational activity and virus infection