# Peter Walter

peter walter (born 5 December 1954) is a German-American molecular biologist and biochemist and Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator == Education == Peter attended the Freie Universität Berlin, received his MS in Organic Chemistry from Vanderbilt University in 1977 and his PhD in Cell Biology at The Rockefeller University in 1981. == Career == During his thesis work in Dr. Günter Blobel's laboratory, Walter purified the proteinaceous members of a macromolecular complex essential for protein translocation into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and showed that it selectively recognizes nascent secretory proteins in the cytoplasm of eukaryotic cells and targets them to the ER. He subsequently identified a 7S RNA component of the complex which is essential for its function and named the holocomplex the signal recognition particle (SRP).Walter moved from Rockefeller to start his own laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco.