The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Peter Walter, Ph.D., professor, department of biochemistry and biophysics, University of California, San Francisco; investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Speaker bio(s)

Virtually all proteins that eukaryotic cells display on their cell surface or secrete into the extracellular space are folded and assembled in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). When the protein folding capacity of the ER is exceeded, misfolded proteins accumulate and trigger the unfolded protein response (UPR), an intracellular signaling pathway that reestablishes homeostasis by adjusting ER abundance according to need. The UPR transmits the signal that controls its transcriptional output from the ER lumen to the nucleus. Mechanistic studies have revealed unprecedented ways through which eukaryotic gene expression can be controlled. A key player is Ire1, a bifunctional ER-resident transmembrane kinase/endoribonuclease that senses misfolded proteins in the ER lumen and initiates non-conventional mRNA splicing and mRNA degradation reactions in the cytosol. Splicing results in the production of a transcription factor that activates UPR target genes, whereas mRNA breakdown reduces the load of proteins entering the ER. If proper balance between the load and the protein folding capacity in the ER cannot be established, metazoan cells undergo apoptosis. Dr. Walter will discuss this role in making life and death decisions, which places the UPR as a potential player at the center of many diseases, including virus infections, protein folding diseases, diabetes and cancer.

Dr. Walter received his M.Sc. in organic chemistry in 1977 from Vanderbilt University and his Ph.D. in cell biology in 1981 from The Rockefeller University, where he worked in Günter Blobel's Laboratory of Cell Biology. He completed postdoctoral work in Dr. Blobel's lab from 1981 to 1982 and was an assistant professor in the lab until 1983, when he joined the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He was appointed to professor in the department of biochemistry and biophysics at UCSF in 1991 and was chair of the dpartment from 2001 to 2008. He was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator in 1997. Among Dr. Walter's numerous accolades are the Searle Scholar Award in 1983, the Passano Award in 1988, the Alfred P. Sloan Award in 1989, the NIH merit Award in 1993, the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences in 2005, the Gairdner International Award (with Kazutoshi Mori) in 2009, and the Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine and the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, both in 2012. He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, the National Academy of Sciences, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Open to

Public

Reception

Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge

Contact

Gloria Phipps

Phone

(212) 327-8967

Sponsor

Gloria Phipps
(212) 327-8967
phippsg@rockefeller.edu