Johannes Walter
Johannes Walter, Ph.D. is the Edward S. Wood Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. His research focuses on how vertebrate cells achieve high-fidelity replication of their genomes. Using single-molecule imaging and a powerful cell-free system developed in his lab, Walter and his team study the molecular machines that replicate DNA and how they overcome damage and other obstacles in the DNA template strands. The team also seeks to understand the roles of tumor suppressor pathways in promoting DNA repair. Their findings help illuminate the causes of genomic instability in hereditary cancers and may inform cancer therapies.
Walter attended college at UC Berkeley, participated in the undergraduate research program at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and graduated from Yale University with a Ph.D in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. In 1995, he joined the laboratory of the late John Newport at UC San Diego. There, he used frog egg extracts to develop the first soluble cell-free system that supports vertebrate chromosomal DNA replication. In 1999, he joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School as an assistant professor in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology. He was promoted to full professor in 2010 and joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2013.