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Nils G. Walter

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Professor of Chemistry, Biophysics, and Biological Chemistry
Nils Walter
Born (1966-08-04) August 4, 1966 (age 58)
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Alma materTechnical University of Darmstadt
Known forSingle-molecule RNA analysis
Scientific career
FieldsBiophysical chemistry
InstitutionsUniversity of Michigan
WebsiteWalter 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).

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.

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. 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.

Walter is the author of more than 200 articles and numerous patents and disclosures of invention, including one on a new diagnostic single molecule counting approach termed SiMREPS that a startup company is currently working to commercialize. 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.

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.

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