Dr. Peter Walter, winner of the 2014 Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, presented the 2016 Tsoo King Lecture, which is hosted by graduate students in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Dr. Walter is an HHMI investigator and Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco.
He is most well-known for discovering a crucial cellular quality-control process that detects incorrectly folded proteins and initiates corrective actions. Known as the unfolded protein response, this process helps cells make life-or-death decisions and is linked to cancer, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes.
