Katherine Henzler-Wildman, professor in the Department of Biochemistry, has been elected a 2024 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Researchers are elected annually by peers — a tradition dating back to 1874 — in recognition of distinguished contributions to advance scientific inquiry and its applications.
“It is really an honor to be named a Fellow,” says Henzler-Wildman. “This recognition of my work is particularly meaningful to me because my research has challenged some of the traditional models of how we think transporters work, and that can feel like swimming upstream.”
Henzler-Wildman, who is also a co-director of the National Magnetic Resonance Facility at Madison (NMRFAM), is known for her exploration of the dynamics, mechanisms, and functions of transport proteins that control movement of molecules across cell membranes. Her research focuses on drug efflux pumps, and is broadening our understanding of the mechanisms involved when cells use proton gradients to energize the process of removing toxins and drugs from the cell.
“I want to understand both the structure and movement of transport proteins, which act as tiny machines to move protons into the cell and drugs out of the cell,” says Henzler-Wildman, who sees important applications to her basic science research. “For example, these drug efflux pumps are used by bacteria to pump antibiotics out of the cell, which can lead to antibiotic resistance. We need to understand the mechanisms cells use to transport antibiotics out in order to block antibiotic resistance and develop new drugs with novel targets.”
The Henzler-Wildman Lab specializes in collecting data with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Using strong magnets to map nuclei in molecules, NMR can be used to identify molecular conformations, interactions, movement, and structure at such high resolution that researcher can track movement of individual protons.
“NMR has the power to look at proton-coupled systems in detail, so we are getting deep insights into mechanism and sometimes that looks different than the model that the scientific community has been using for the past 20 years,” says Henzler-Wildman. “It’s exciting to start to rewrite some of these fundamental understandings of what it means to be a transport protein.”
Written by Renata Solan.