Mark Walker

Mark Walker is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of New Mexico. His research focuses on accelerating the discovery and characterization of novel natural products and natural product-like compounds through genome mining, synthetic biology, directed evolution, and next-generation sequencing. He aims to address societal challenges like antibiotic resistance by engineering natural product biosynthesis pathways.

Education:

• B.A. in Biochemistry, Oberlin College (2004)
• Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of California, Berkeley (2013)
• Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2013-2018)

Research Interests:

• Genome mining and bioinformatics for natural product discovery
• Engineering lanthipeptides and other ribosomally synthesized peptides
• Fluorine chemistry in living systems
• Antibiotic resistance mitigation strategies
• Directed evolution of biosynthetic pathways

Laboratory: The M.C. Walker Lab at UNM develops innovative tools for biosynthetic engineering, including yeast/phage display platforms and CRISPR-based methods. Their work bridges fundamental research with applications in drug discovery and sustainable chemistry.