Nels Elde

Professor

Nels Elde is an evolutionary geneticist studying interactions between infectious microbes and their hosts. The work spans computational and experimental approaches using genomes and cells from primates, bats, and rodents as well as genetic model systems like yeast and zebrafish. Elde was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the city of lakes, along with a brother, sister, and multitude of pets. He graduated from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota with a degree in Biology in 1995 and from the University of Chicago in 2005 with a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington before joining the faculty at the University of Utah in 2011. 

The Elde laboratory investigates host-pathogen interfaces and the evolutionary impact of these interactions on genomic and cellular complexity. Protein surfaces at these interfaces often evolve in a manner resembling molecular arms races, providing a conspicuous means to investigate mechanisms underlying the process of evolution. A major focus of these efforts is using integrated phylogenetic and experimental approaches to identify new sources of genetic resistance to infectious diseases. The Elde lab also uses model organisms as platforms for virus discovery and to understand the rules by which hosts adapt to respond to infections. The approaches can provide fundamental advances for understanding how infectious microbes shape host evolution. 

Since opening the lab, Elde was named a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences, Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases, and a Kavli Foundation Fellow. Elde serves as an associate editor for PLOS Pathogens and is a member of the Genetic Variation and Evolution study section at NIH. Elde received the NIH Director’s Transformative R01 award and is a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow.