After two years as intern and junior assistant resident in Medicine at Barnes Hospital, St Louis, Gordon joined the Laboratory of Biochemistry at the National Cancer Institute as a Research Associate in 1975.
His laboratory initially combined the use of transgenic mouse models and biochemical approaches to elucidate the mechanisms of gut epithelial development along the duodenal-colonic and crypt-villus axes.
Gordon played a pivotal role in the study of protein N-myristoylation, a co-translational modification by which a myristoyl group is covalently attached to an N-terminal glycine residue of a nascent polypeptide.
[5] Gordon's group published a series of elegant studies that describe the ability of components of the commensal microbiota to induce specific responses in the host intestinal epithelium.
[6] Gordon's group published a seminal study in which functional genomics were used to document the genome-wide intestinal epithelial response to microbial colonization of the gastrointestinal tract.
[7] Dr. Gordon's laboratory has investigated epithelial cell interaction with human-associated pathogens, including uropathogenic Escherichia coli, Helicobacter pylori, and Listeria monocytogenes.
To tease apart the complex relationships that exist within this gut microbiota, Dr. Gordon's research program employs germ-free and gnotobiotic mice as model hosts, which may be colonized with defined, simplified microbial communities.