2017 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize Lectures
Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD
Dr. Robert J. Glaser Distinguished University Professor
Director, Edison Family Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology
Washington University School of Medicine
Lecture #1
“The Gut Microbiota and Childhood Undernutrition: Looking at Human Developmental Biology from a Microbial Perspective”
Thursday, January 25, 2018
10:00 a.m.
Davis Auditorium (Rm. 412), Schapiro Center (CEPSR)
530 West 120th Street
Jeffrey Gordon received his A.B. from Oberlin College and his M.D. from the University of Chicago. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine and gastroenterology at Barnes Hospital and Washington University and was a post-doctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Biochemistry at NIH’s National Cancer Institute. In 1981, he joined the faculty of Washington University, where he has spent his entire career, first as a member of the Departments of Medicine and Biological Chemistry, then as Head of the Department of Molecular Biology and Pharmacology, and since 2003 as founding Director of the University’s interdepartmental, interdisciplinary Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology. Dr. Gordon has had the privilege and pleasure of serving as research mentor to 127 PhD and MD/PhD students and post-doctoral fellows since he established his lab.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Philosophical Society. His honors include the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology from the National Academy of Sciences, the Robert Koch Award, the Passano Laureate Award, the Dickson Prize in Medicine, the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine, the Keio Medical Science Prize, the Steven C. Beering Award, and the Massry Prize.
Gordon’s lab has used interdisciplinary approaches to characterize the assembly, operations, expressed properties and biological effects of human gut microbial communities. They have done so by combining studies of twins as well as members of birth cohorts living in low- and high-income countries, with studies of gnotobiotic animal models colonized with gut microbes from these individuals and fed components of their diets. His results have emphasized how microbes function in a community context to impact health and disease. His discoveries of how diet and the gut microbiome interact have altered our understanding of two global health problems; obesity and childhood malnutrition. His group’s work has provided a road map for establishing preclinical proof for a causal relationship between human microbial community configurations and health status, and for identifying ways to alter community functions, including development of health-promoting foods during this time of rapid population growth and challenges to sustainable agriculture. This work has ushered in a new era of microbiome-based therapeutics and preventive medicine.
