Peter Walter - F1000 Section Head (since 11 July 2001)
Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics , University of California, San Francisco, La Jolla, CA, USA
BIOGRAPHY
ACADEMIC POSITION:• Professor and Chair, Department of Biochemistry/Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco
• Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
EDUCATION:
• Vordiplom (Chemistry) Freie Universität Berlin (Germany)
• MSc (Organic Chemistry) Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN (USA)
• PhD (Cell Biology) The Rockefeller University, New York NY (USA)
MEMBERSHIPS:
• American Academy of Microbiology
• American Academy of Arts & Sciences
• National Academy of Sciences
• European Molecular Biology Organization
• Leopoldina Academy of Scientists
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
The major interest of my lab concerns fundamental questions in cell biology to which we seek molecular and mechanistic answers. Recent work has focused on how cells regulate the abundance of their organelles, how membranes are organized and rearrange dynamically, and how proteins become properly localized within a cell. An example is the identification and characterization of the unfolded protein response (UPR), a sophisticated intracellular signaling pathway that ascertains that cells maintain the abundance of their endoplasmic reticulum to properly fold newly assembled proteins. Recent evidence suggests that the UPR is disregulated in a number of disease processes and may therefore represent an important target for potentially useful therapeutic intervention for cancer and other diseases.