Katherine Henzler-Wildman

Katherine Anne Henzler-Wildman is the Jean V. Thomas Professor in Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2024. She is known for her work on how proteins control the movement of molecules across membranes.

Katherine Henzler-Wildman
Alma mater	University of Michigan
Scientific career
Thesis	The mechanism of lipid bilayer disruption by the human antimicrobial peptide, LL-37 (2003)

Education and career

Henzler-Wildman received a B.A. from Cornell University in 1998.^[1] She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2003.^[2] She then moved to Brandeis University where she worked with Dorothee Kern as a postdoctoral researcher until 2008 when she joined the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis.^[2] In 2015 moved to the University of Madison, and as of 2025 Henzler-Wildman is the Jean V. Thomas Professor in Biochemistry.^[3]

Research

Henzler-Wildman's early research determined structural details of lipid membranes^[4] and the dynamics of protein folding.^[5] She has investigated the protein EmrE^[6] and demonstrated how this protein pushes toxic molecules out of microbial cells.^[7]

Selected publications

• Henzler-Wildman, Katherine; Kern, Dorothee (2007-12-13). "Dynamic personalities of proteins". Nature. 450 (7172): 964–972. doi:10.1038/nature06522. ISSN 0028-0836.
• Henzler-Wildman, Katherine A.; Lei, Ming; Thai, Vu; Kerns, S. Jordan; Karplus, Martin; Kern, Dorothee (2007). "A hierarchy of timescales in protein dynamics is linked to enzyme catalysis". Nature. 450 (7171): 913–916. doi:10.1038/nature06407. ISSN 0028-0836.
• Henzler Wildman, Katherine A.; Lee, Dong-Kuk; Ramamoorthy, A. (2003-06-01). "Mechanism of Lipid Bilayer Disruption by the Human Antimicrobial Peptide, LL-37". Biochemistry. 42 (21): 6545–6558. doi:10.1021/bi0273563. ISSN 0006-2960.
• Morrison, Emma A.; DeKoster, Gregory T.; Dutta, Supratik; Vafabakhsh, Reza; Clarkson, Michael W.; Bahl, Arjun; Kern, Dorothee; Ha, Taekjip; Henzler-Wildman, Katherine A. (2012). "Antiparallel EmrE exports drugs by exchanging between asymmetric structures". Nature. 481 (7379): 45–50. doi:10.1038/nature10703. ISSN 0028-0836. PMC 3253143. PMID 22178925.
• Lewis, Adam; Kurauskas, Vilius; Tonelli, Marco; Henzler-Wildman, Katherine (2021-10-28). "Ion-dependent structure, dynamics, and allosteric coupling in a non-selective cation channel". Nature Communications. 12 (1) 6225. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-26538-8. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 8553846. PMID 34711838.

Awards and honors

Henzler-Wildman was named a Searle Scholars Program in 2010,^[8] and received the Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award from the Biophysical Society in 2013.^[9] She was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2024.^[10]