John E. Walker

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

Biography

John Ernest Walker was born in 1941 in Halifax, Yorkshire. He studied at the University of Oxford and a doctorate here 1969. 1974 he began working as assistant at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge and is there since 1982 as a Senior Scientist. In 1995 he was elected to the Royal Society, which honored him in 2012 with the Copley Medal.

Work

Like his colleagues and Skou Boyer John Ernest Walker dealt primarily with enzymes that catalyze the work of adenosine triphosphate, the main energy suppliers in the metabolism of organisms. He and Boyer were focused mainly on the synthesis of ATP by the enzyme ATP synthase. This creates in the adenosine diphosphate (ADP ) and a further molecule of the ATP phosphate by two binds them together. In the 1980s, Boyer presented a model of how the ATP could be formed via the ATP synthase. As a basis biochemical analysis data ministered to him. The correctness of the model was confirmed by John Ernest Walker analyzes the structure of the enzyme.