Moore began work as a
postdoctoral researcher in 1979 in the laboratory of Howard Goodman in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the
University of California, San Francisco, where he studied the genetic sequence of
human growth hormone and the
DNA binding activity of the
glucocorticoid receptor. Moore joined the faculty of the Department of Genetics at
Harvard Medical School in 1981, and became a founding member of the Department of Molecular Biology at
Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1987, Moore, alongside other colleagues including
Frederick M Ausbel, established the laboratory manual series Current Protocols in Molecular Biology, which was acquired by
Wiley in 1995 and later expanded to include additional titles. Moore published a series of studies beginning in 1994 identifying and describing the constitutive androstane receptor (CAR), a
constitutively active nuclear receptor which senses and responds to endobiotic and
xenobiotic substances. In 1996, Moore and his lab identified the small heterodimer partner (SHP), an orphan nuclear receptor without DNA-binding activity which binds other proteins to regulate their activity. He found that SHP inhibits
estrogen receptors as well as
retinoid receptors. He later found that SHP regulates the
circadian clock in mice. In 1997, Moore was recruited to the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, then headed by
Bert W. O'Malley, at
Baylor College of Medicine in
Houston, Texas. There, he identified the
bile acid and xenobiotic
ligands of
farnesoid X-receptor, an orphan nuclear receptor he had first purified in 1995, and an upstream regulator of SHP. He also identified
androstane metabolites and xenobiotics as ligands for CAR during this time. The discovery of bile acid ligands for FXR led Moore and colleagues to demonstrate a strong link between nuclear hormone receptors and
liver disease. He showed that disruption of CAR, FXR, and SHP leads to
liver tumors,
hepatomegaly, and
fatty liver disease. Moore became professor of the Department of Nutritional Sciences & Toxicology at the
University of California, Berkeley in 2020, where he became department chair in 2022. ==Awards and honors==