Abraham J. Koo PhD

Abraham Koo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Interdisciplinary Plant Group at the University of Missouri, MO, 65211, USA. Abe Koo did his B.S. and M.S. degrees at Korea University in Seoul, South Korea. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2004 at Michigan State University (MSU) in Dr. John Ohlrogge's laboratory where he studied functional genomics of lipid metabolism in higher plants and wrote a dissertation on the topic of fatty acid trafficking. He joined Dr. Gregg Howe’s group in the Department of Energy-Plant Research Laboratory (DOE-PRL) at MSU where he was first introduced to the field of jasmonate. During this time he identified and characterized enzymes involved in JA metabolism including OPCL1 and CYP94B3, and published papers on rapid long-distance wound signaling. In 2012, he moved to the University of Missouri as an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry. The research in the Koo lab centers on the metabolism and signaling of jasmonate. Lately, his lab has also been working on the impact of altered oil metabolism on host-insect interactions. Dr. Koo was the recipient of the Anton Lang Memorial Research Excellence Award from MSU DOE-Plant Research Laboratory in 2010 and the Arthur C. Neish Young Investigator Award from the Phytochemical Society of North America in 2015. A paper he coauthored in 2009 was selected as the Top Five Most-Cited Papers Award by the journal Phytochemistry.