Peter Walter discusses features of the chloroplast unfolded protein response with visiting postdoc Pelin Telkoparan (left) and postdoc Silvia Ramundo (right), who works in the Walter Lab. Photo by Susan Merrell
Peter Walter, PhD, vividly remembers the atmosphere of "political insanity" that colored an otherwise happy youth in Cold War-era West Berlin, then a walled city that was itself encircled by the hostile territory of East Germany.
"If you crossed that wall," he recalled, "you’d be shot at, and that has to affect your life."
It’s not surprising, then, that Walter was drawn to science, the realm of human life that perhaps comes closest to erasing, or at least blurring, such boundaries.
"Science bridges divides and political systems and religions, and it’s a very unifying force in the world," Walter said. "We build knowledge, and we use it for the betterment of mankind."
Over the course of a research career spanning four decades, Walter – a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at UC San Francisco and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 1997 – has added considerably to our knowledge, particularly in his groundbreaking work on a fundamental cellular quality-control system known as the unfolded protein response, or UPR.
For his work on the UPR, Walter on Monday received the 2014 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, one of the most prestigious honors in science and medicine. He shared the award with Kazutoshi Mori, PhD, a leading UPR researcher at Kyoto University in Japan.
Walter is the 12th UCSF faculty member to receive either a Basic Medical Research Award or a Clinical Medical Research Award from the Lasker Foundation, whose awards are popularly known as the "American Nobels."
It’s the second major accolade this year alone for Walter, who in May won Asia’s highest scientific honor, the 2014 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine.
A Risky Career Path
From a very young age, Walter had a passion to understand how things work.
Though he was strongly influenced by his father, who owned a drugstore, the unusual political and economic constraints on everyday life in West Berlin kept his parents preoccupied with earning a living, and they saw their son’s chosen path – a life as a working scientist – as potentially risky, Walter said. "The road I chose to go down had very little connection to their reality, and it’s wonderful that they gave me the freedom and encouragement to travel along it."