John E. Walker

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Sir John E. Walker, 2018

Sir John Ernest Walker (born January 7, 1941 in Halifax ) is a British molecular biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1997 together with Paul Delos Boyer and Jens Christian Skou for his work on adenosine triphosphate (ATP) .

biography

John Ernest Walker was born in Halifax, Yorkshire in 1941. He studied at the University of Oxford and received his doctorate there in 1969. In 1974 he began working at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge University , where he has been a Senior Scientist since 1982. In 1995 he was admitted to the Royal Society , which awarded him the Copley Medal in 2012 . In 1999 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor ("Sir").

plant

Like his colleagues Skou and Boyer, John Ernest Walker was primarily concerned with enzymes that catalyze the work of adenosine triphosphate , the main source of energy in the metabolism of organisms. He and Boyer mainly concentrated on the synthesis of ATP by the enzyme ATP synthase . This produces ATP from adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and another phosphate molecule by binding these two to each other. In the 1980s Boyer presented a model of how ATP could be formed via ATP synthase. Biochemical analysis data served as the basis. The correctness of the model was confirmed by John Ernest Walker through structural analysis of the enzyme.

Memberships

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Diagram Group: The Facts on File Chemistry Handbook. Infobase Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-1-438-10955-8 , p. 180.
  2. ^ Membership directory: John Walker. Academia Europaea, accessed January 10, 2018 (English, with biographical and other information).