Marcos Eduardo Ortega '97 joins Macalester as one of nine tenure-track professors

Ortega's research interests include structural biology of viruses. The Ortega lab utilizes X-ray crystallography, biophysical studies, and biochemical methods to try and understand DNA packaging of viruses at the molecular level. He uses bacteriophage as model systems to try and understand the complex machinery required to initiate replication of double stranded DNA viruses. The research goals in his lab are to crystallize viral proteins involved in assembly of a mature virus. The protein crystals will allow for structure solution of these viral proteins which will hopefully help in developing viral therapies for eukaryotic viruses, including adenovirus, herpes virus, and Epstein Barr virus. Ortega received his BA from Grinnell College and his PhD from the University of Colorado. He comes to Macalester from Harvey Mudd College, where he was a HHMI Teaching and research postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology.