The Department of Biochemistry at Emory University welcomed Dr. Eric Ortlund as Assistant Professor of Biochemistry in September 2007. Dr. Ortlund came to Emory from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemistry. Prior to his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of South Carolina where he also earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and a Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry.

“I am delighted to be here at Emory and I continue to be impressed with the faculty, staff, and students in the Department of Biochemistry,” said Dr. Ortlund. “Emory provides an outstanding environment, supporting world class science, and I look forward to becoming a part of this community!”The Ortlund lab will use structural biology to focus on nuclear receptor mediated transcription, on complexes between specific lipid transporters and their cognate nuclear receptor recipients and will utilize structure and ancestral gene resurrection to understand the evolution of novel function within proteins.

Recently, Dr. Ortlund published his work in Science, showing for the first time how a medically important protein evolved. By solving the structure of a 450 million-year-old resurrected protein, Dr. Ortlund and his colleagues from the University of North Carolina and the University of Oregon were able to see the mechanisms by which evolution molded a tiny molecular machine at the atomic level, and to reconstruct the order of events by which history unfolded (see page 2 for a synopsis of the research, including a figure and description).

Currently, Dr. Ortlund is co-PI on a grant entitled “Experimental and Structural Evolution of Steroid Hormone Receptors,” in a collaboration with Joe Thornton, Ph.D. from the University of Oregon.

Dr. Ortlund’s office and laboratory are located in the Biochemistry Connector in rooms G231 and G235.