Nils G. Walter

Last updated
Nils Walter
Nils Walter.jpg
Born (1966-08-04) August 4, 1966 (age 58)
Alma mater Technical University of Darmstadt
Known forSingle-molecule RNA analysis
Scientific career
FieldsBiophysical chemistry
Institutions University of Michigan
Website Walter Lab

Nils G. Walter, Dr. Ing., is the Francis S. Collins Collegiate Professor of Chemistry, Biophysics, and Biological Chemistry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Research in the Nils Walter Lab focuses on non-coding RNA through the lens of single molecule techniques. He is the Founding Director of the Single Molecule Analysis in real-Time (SMART) Center at Michigan. In addition, Walter is the Founding Co-Director for the University of Michigan Center for RNA Biomedicine whose mission is to enrich the university’s intellectual and training environment around RNA Biomedicine. He is currently an Associate Director for the Michigan Post-baccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP).

Contents

Education and early life

Nils G. Walter was born in 1966 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He received his “Vordiplom” (B.S.) and “Diploma” (Masters) from the Technical University of Darmstadt after performing research with Hans-Günther Gassen  [ de ] on the physicochemical characterization of a protein dehydrogenase enzyme. He is a summa cum laude Dr. Ing. (PhD) graduate from the Technical University of Darmstadt and the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry where he studied molecular in vitro evolution of DNA and RNA using fluorescence techniques with Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen. For his postdoctoral studies, he turned to RNA enzymes under the guidance of John M. Burke at the University of Vermont. [1]

Career

The Nils Walter Lab studies both non-coding RNA and protein-coding RNAs, and how the former control the gene expression of the latter, using tools from biophysics, biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology and chemical biology. [2] Most prominently, the lab uses leading-edge single molecule and super-resolution microscopy and single-molecule FRET approaches to probe the diverse functional mechanisms of transcriptional and translational riboswitches, the spliceosome, the RNA silencing and RNA interference machinery, ribozymes, as well as devices from DNA nanotechnology, in vitro and in live cells. [3] [4] [5]

Walter is the author of more than 200 articles and numerous patents and disclosures of invention, [6] including one on a new diagnostic single molecule counting approach termed SiMREPS that a startup company is currently working to commercialize. [7] He has been invited to speak at over 180 speaking engagements and is the Principal Investigator of 19 current and past National Institutes of Health research grants and 31 private foundation grants (see Nils Walter Lab).

He currently serves or has served on numerous editorial boards including Methods, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIRES), Biopolymers and the Journal of Biological Chemistry, as well as being a guest editor for Chemical Reviews, Encyclopedia of Biophysics, and Methods in Enzymology. Walter has received numerous honors including the Jean Dreyfus Boissevain Lectureship of Trinity University, the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award, the Imes and Moore Faculty Award, and the Faculty Recognition Award of the University of Michigan. He has been elected an AAAS Fellow. Walter is a member of several professional organizations including the Society of German Chemists (GDCh), German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology  [ de ] (GBM), the RNA Society, the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Biophysical Society.

So far, he has trained or is training 35 postdoctoral fellows and over 80 undergraduate students in his laboratory, whereas 30 scientists have received their PhD degrees under Walter, with more currently training to do so.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RNA</span> Family of large biological molecules

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule that is essential for most biological functions, either by performing the function itself or by forming a template for the production of proteins. RNA and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) are nucleic acids. The nucleic acids constitute one of the four major macromolecules essential for all known forms of life. RNA is assembled as a chain of nucleotides. Cellular organisms use messenger RNA (mRNA) to convey genetic information that directs synthesis of specific proteins. Many viruses encode their genetic information using an RNA genome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RNA world</span> Hypothetical stage in the early evolutionary history of life on Earth

The RNA world is a hypothetical stage in the evolutionary history of life on Earth, in which self-replicating RNA molecules proliferated before the evolution of DNA and proteins. The term also refers to the hypothesis that posits the existence of this stage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biophysics</span> Study of biological systems using methods from the physical sciences

Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. Biophysical research shares significant overlap with biochemistry, molecular biology, physical chemistry, physiology, nanotechnology, bioengineering, computational biology, biomechanics, developmental biology and systems biology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ribozyme</span> Type of RNA molecules

Ribozymes are RNA molecules that have the ability to catalyze specific biochemical reactions, including RNA splicing in gene expression, similar to the action of protein enzymes. The 1982 discovery of ribozymes demonstrated that RNA can be both genetic material and a biological catalyst, and contributed to the RNA world hypothesis, which suggests that RNA may have been important in the evolution of prebiotic self-replicating systems.

The history of molecular biology begins in the 1930s with the convergence of various, previously distinct biological and physical disciplines: biochemistry, genetics, microbiology, virology and physics. With the hope of understanding life at its most fundamental level, numerous physicists and chemists also took an interest in what would become molecular biology.

John Norman Abelson is an American molecular biologist with expertise in biophysics, biochemistry, and genetics. He was a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hammerhead ribozyme</span>

The hammerhead ribozyme is an RNA motif that catalyzes reversible cleavage and ligation reactions at a specific site within an RNA molecule. It is one of several catalytic RNAs (ribozymes) known to occur in nature. It serves as a model system for research on the structure and properties of RNA, and is used for targeted RNA cleavage experiments, some with proposed therapeutic applications. Named for the resemblance of early secondary structure diagrams to a hammerhead shark, hammerhead ribozymes were originally discovered in two classes of plant virus-like RNAs: satellite RNAs and viroids. They are also known in some classes of retrotransposons, including the retrozymes. The hammerhead ribozyme motif has been ubiquitously reported in lineages across the tree of life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hairpin ribozyme</span> Enzymatic section of RNA

The hairpin ribozyme is a small section of RNA that can act as a ribozyme. Like the hammerhead ribozyme it is found in RNA satellites of plant viruses. It was first identified in the minus strand of the tobacco ringspot virus (TRSV) satellite RNA where it catalyzes self-cleavage and joining (ligation) reactions to process the products of rolling circle virus replication into linear and circular satellite RNA molecules. The hairpin ribozyme is similar to the hammerhead ribozyme in that it does not require a metal ion for the reaction.

Douglas "Doug" H. Turner is an American chemist and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Rochester.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ming-Ming Zhou</span>

Ming-Ming Zhou is an American scientist whose specification is structural and chemical biology, NMR spectroscopy, and drug design. He is the Dr. Harold and Golden Lamport Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pharmacological Sciences. He is also the co-director of the Drug Discovery Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, as well as Professor of Sciences. Zhou is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reduced dimensions form</span>

In biophysics and related fields, reduced dimension forms (RDFs) are unique on-off mechanisms for random walks that generate two-state trajectories (see Fig. 1 for an example of a RDF and Fig. 2 for an example of a two-state trajectory). It has been shown that RDFs solve two-state trajectories, since only one RDF can be constructed from the data, where this property does not hold for on-off kinetic schemes, where many kinetic schemes can be constructed from a particular two-state trajectory (even from an ideal on-off trajectory). Two-state time trajectories are very common in measurements in chemistry, physics, and the biophysics of individual molecules (e.g. measurements of protein dynamics and DNA and RNA dynamics, activity of ion channels, enzyme activity, quantum dots ), thus making RDFs an important tool in the analysis of data in these fields.

Scott A. Strobel is the provost of Yale University as well as a professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry. He was the vice provost for Science Initiatives and vice president for West Campus Planning & Program Development. An educator and researcher, he has led a number of Yale initiatives over the past two decades. Strobel was appointed as Yale's provost in 2020.

Daniel Herschlag is an American biochemist and Professor of Biochemistry at the Stanford University School of Medicine. His research uses an interdisciplinary approach to advance our understanding of the fundamental behavior of RNA and proteins. He is well known for his application of rigorous kinetic and mechanistic approaches to RNA and protein systems.

Rachel Green is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on ribosomes and their function in translation. Green has also been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator since 2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philipp Holliger</span> Swiss molecular biologist

Philipp Holliger is a Swiss molecular biologist best known for his work on xeno nucleic acids (XNAs) and RNA engineering. Holliger is a program leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

Lynette Cegelski is an American physical chemist and chemical biologist who studies extracellular structures such as biofilms and membrane proteins. She is an associate professor of chemistry and, by courtesy, of chemical engineering at Stanford University. She is a Stanford Bio-X and Stanford ChEM-H affiliated faculty member.

Gerd Ulrich "Uli" Nienhaus is a German physicist who is a professor and director of the Institute of Applied Physics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). At the KIT, he is also affiliated with the Institute of Nanotechnology, Institute of Biological and Chemical Systems, and Institute of Physical Chemistry, and he is an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Kenichi Yokoyama is an enzymologist, chemical biologist, and natural product biochemist originally from Tokyo, Japan. He is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Duke University School of Medicine. In 2019, Yokoyama was awarded the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry from the American Chemical Society.

Julie Suzanne Biteen is a Canadian-born American chemist who is professor of chemistry and biophysics at the University of Michigan. Her research considers the development of imaging systems for biological systems. She was named the Stanford University Sessler Distinguished Alumni Lecturer in 2021.

Ulrike Endesfelder is a German physicist known for her work in Single-Molecule Microbiology and Super-resolution microscopy. She is the Group Leader of the Research Group Endesfelder and full professor (W3) at the Institute for microbiology and biotechnology at the University of Bonn in Bonn, Germany.

References

  1. Walter, Nils G. (1998-02-01). "The hairpin ribozyme: structure, assembly and catalysis". Curr. Opin. Chem. Biol. 2 (1): 24–30. doi:10.1259/0007-1285-47-561-588. PMID   4371365.
  2. Walter, Nils G. (2015-04-01). "Going viral: riding the RNA wave to discovery". RNA. 21 (4): 756–757. doi:10.1261/rna.049403.114. ISSN   1469-9001. PMC   4371365 . PMID   25780223.
  3. Walter, Nils G.; Huang, Cheng-Yen; Manzo, Anthony J.; Sobhy, Mohamed A. (2008-06-01). "Do-it-yourself guide: how to use the modern single-molecule toolkit". Nature Methods. 5 (6): 475–489. doi:10.1038/nmeth.1215. ISSN   1548-7105. PMC   2574008 . PMID   18511916.
  4. Pitchiaya, Sethuramasundaram; Heinicke, Laurie A.; Custer, Thomas C.; Walter, Nils G. (2014-03-26). "Single molecule fluorescence approaches shed light on intracellular RNAs". Chemical Reviews. 114 (6): 3224–3265. doi:10.1021/cr400496q. ISSN   1520-6890. PMC   3968247 . PMID   24417544.
  5. Widom, Julia R.; Dhakal, Soma; Heinicke, Laurie A.; Walter, Nils G. (2014-11-01). "Single-molecule tools for enzymology, structural biology, systems biology and nanotechnology: an update". Archives of Toxicology. 88 (11): 1965–1985. Bibcode:2014ArTox..88.1965W. doi:10.1007/s00204-014-1357-9. ISSN   1432-0738. PMC   4615698 . PMID   25212907.
  6. Mandal, Shankar; Li, Zi; Chatterjee, Tanmay; Khanna, Kunal; Montoya, Karen; Dai, Liuhan; Petersen, Chandler; Li, Lidan; Tewari, Muneesh; Johnson-Buck, Alexander; Walter, Nils G. (2021-02-01). "Direct kinetic fingerprinting for high-accuracy single-molecule counting of diverse disease biomarkers". Accounts of Chemical Research. 54 (2): 388–402. doi:10.1021/acs.accounts.0c00621. PMC   8752314 . PMID   33382587.
  7. Johnson-Buck, Alexander; Su, Xin; Giraldez, Maria D.; Zhao, Meiping; Tewari, Muneesh; Walter, Nils G. (2015-07-01). "Kinetic fingerprinting to identify and count single nucleic acids". Nature Biotechnology. 33 (7): 730–732. doi:10.1038/nbt.3246. ISSN   1546-1696. PMC   4559481 . PMID   26098451.