Impact
David Walker is a Professor and Vice Chair of Academic Personnel in UCLA's Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, where his laboratory uses Drosophila melanogaster genetics to study the molecular and cellular basis of aging, with the aim of identifying therapeutic targets for age-related disease. Early work with Seymour Benzer linked mitochondrial function and apolipoprotein D to stress resistance and lifespan. His group later showed that RNAi of mitochondrial respiratory chain genes and expression of yeast NDI1 can extend fly lifespan, and that promoting Drp1-mediated mitochondrial fission in midlife, Parkin overexpression, neuronal BNIP3-mediated mitophagy and upregulation of the autophagy adaptor p62/SQSTM1 can each prolong healthy lifespan. A second line of work established intestinal barrier dysfunction as a marker linking metabolic and inflammatory changes to death in aging flies (PNAS, 2012) and connected shifts in gut microbiota to intestinal decline and mortality, which his group has argued is an evolutionarily conserved hallmark of aging. He showed with colleagues that AMPK modulates aging non-cell-autonomously and co-authored, with Malene Hansen and David Rubinsztein, a review of autophagy as a promoter of longevity (Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 2018).
Metrics
- h-index 36 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗
Research funding
26 NIH awards · USD 11M total NIH RePORTER ↗
- Role of Intestinal Homeostasis in Organismal Aging National Institute on Aging · 2021 · USD 1M
- Harnessing midgut mitochondrial dynamics to enhance Anopheline mosquito fitness National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases · 2014 · USD 775K
- Metabolic regulation of stem cell behavior and longevity National Institute on Aging · 2015 · USD 627K
- Role of Mitochondrial Homeostasis in Animal Aging National Institute on Aging · 2026 · USD 555K
- Role of Mitochondrial Homeostasis in Animal Aging National Institute on Aging · 2024 · USD 555K