News

08 March 2025. The group attended the Girls Engineering Day at Woodville-Tomkin High School in Garden City as part of the Society of Women Engineers. It was also International Women's Day. The lab had a booth with some fun activities for the student, information about our research (and possibly volunteering for the lab), candies, and some freebies from ACS (moles, pencils, periodic tables). Mark, Grace (MS APS), and Alex (volunteer from Mercer SOM) represented the lab. Grace and Alex also volunteered their time for a College and Professional Panel to help parents navigate post-HS life.

01 March 2025. Mark, Alicia (RA), Grace (MS APS), Ruby (Sr Bio), Kaitlyn (Sr Biochem), and Jada (Jr Biochem) all helped and volunteered in this year's Science Olympiad!

15 February 2025. Our work on PRL3 and development of cancer metastasis was featured in Grice Connect, Statesboro-Bulloch County news. Click here.

27 January 2025. Alicia assumes position of Research Assistant in the lab and will support our protein expression and purification needs as well as high throughput in vitro assays.

14 January 2025. New members have joined! Welcome Gracie Bliss (FR Biology), Hailey Chen (SO Biology), Victoire Komlan (SR Rehab Science), and Honore Ouedraogo (MS Applied Physical Science)! 

13 December 2024. The lab ended the year with our annual State of the Lab Address by Mark. It also featured our inaugural dela Cerna Lab Olympics. There were a total of nine different events. This year, Mark (winning 3 of the 9 events) was awarded the ultimate champion award. Needless to say, there is a huge target on his back for next year -- the lab is coming for you!! We thank MS student Grace for organizing the olympics! In the image is Biochemistry Sophomore Oscar's attempt at the pipette tip basketball event.

2-11 November 2024. Through funding from the Korea Basic Science Institute, Mark was able to spend a week in the institute in Ochang, South Korea with collaborators Donghan Lee (KBSI) and Elias Fernandez (U. Tennessee). This visit also allowed Mark to use one of the world's first 1.2 GHz NMR! 

24 October 2024. Mark's application was selected and funded as part of this year's cohort of Jean Dreyfus Lectureship for Undergraduate Institutions. This award will support summer research for chemistry students and will fund a symposium/talk featuring a high-profile scientist (to be named soon!). Congratulations!

24 September 2024. Jaden, Biochemistry sophomore, has been selected to be a part of the University's Emerging Research Scholars program. Congratulations, Jaden!

21 August 2024. MS student, Grace, presented her work on fluorinated fragment screening to identify new PRL3 inhibitors at the Fall 2024 meeting of the American Chemical Society in Denver, CO. She has now presented several aspects of her undergraduate and graduate research in FIVE different states! Whoop, whoop!

01 August 2024. WE ARE NOW NIH-FUNDED! The National Institutes of Health / National Institute of General Medical Sciences has funded our R16 proposal to study the druggability of oncogenic and pro-metastatic phosphatase, PRL3, and develop novel migrastatics targeting this protein. LET'S GET THINGS DONE!

28 July 2024. Send off 'party' at Flacos Tacos, Richmond Hill for Davis who is off to pursue his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Georgia. Thank you to the Rutan family for hosting! Turned out to be a send off 'party' for Victoria as well, who is leaving for college at the California Institute of Technology.

18 July 2024.  All members attended Georgia Southerns Summer Research Showcase to disucss their summer work. Poster presenters included Grace Bennett (MS APS), Oscar Sistos-Barron (Biochemistry, So.), Nick Dillon (Biochemistry, Sr.), Kaitlyn Van Ostenbridge (Biochemistry, Sr.), and Jada Samuels (Biochemistry, So.). Also presenting was Davis Rutan (BS Biochemistry 2024), who decided to stay for the summer before heading to start his PhD in the fall, and summer interns Olivia Creamer (PMS APS) and Ruby Pitts (Biology, Sr.). Great job to all presenters! 

1 July 2024.  Grace's first paper has been accepted for publication in Biochemistry and Biophysics Report! In this paper, she uses computational tools to evaluate the druggability of PRL3. This is also the first official publication from the lab!! Yay, us!

11 May 2024.  Congratulations to all 2024 graduates, but especially to ours. Ty Spencer (Cum Laude, BS Biochemistry, minor in Biology 2024), Davis Rutan (BS Biochemistry 2024), Anna Feil (Cum Laude, BS Biochemistry 2024), and Grace Bennett (BS Biochemistry 2024) from Georgia Southern and Chase Yost (BS Biology, minor in Biochemistry 2024) from Bellarmine University. 

Davis will be starting his PhD program in August at the University of Georgia. Grace and Anna will both be returning to Georgia Southern for their MS degree, and Chase will continue his lab excellence doing research at the University of Kentucky!

Congrats and good luck! 

9 May 2024.  Nick Dillon (Biochemistry, Jr.) and Mark closed the semester out by attending the annual VIP Consortium in Atlanta. Mark gave a talk entitled 'Contributing Student Success Through Collaborative and Interdisciplinary Research in Structural Biology and Drug Discovery'. 

26 April 2024. Biochemistry junior, Nick Dillon, was just given another award for his summer research! Nick was awarded the ASBMB Summer Undergraduate Research Award. Congrats Nick! He will be very busy researching this summer!

23 April 2024. Kaitlyn Van Ostenbridge (Biochemistry, Sr.), Oscar Sistos-Barron (Biocheistry, Fr.), and Nick Dillon (Biochemistry, Jr.) were all awarded the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship award from the College of Science and Mathematics! Chantell Coley (PSM Intern) was also awarded a Coastal Georgia ACS scholarship. This will fund each of their projects for the summer! Congratulations to all! 

18 April 2024. Several students attended the Georgia Southern Student Scholar Symposium (GS4). Anna Feil (Biochemistry, Sr.), Nick Dillon (Biochemistry, Jr.), and Grace Bennett (Biochemistry, Sr.) all had poster presentations showcasing their work. 

16 April 2024. Biochemistry freshman, Oscar Sistos-Barron, was  awarded a summer research grant from the College Office of Undergraduate Research. Congratulations, Oscar!

30 March 2024. Grace Bennett (Biochemistry, Sr.), Nick Dillon (Biochemistry, Jr.), and Mark attended the VIP symposium held at NCR Voyix in Atlanta. Nick presented an overview of our labs PTPome project!

24 March 2024. Grace Bennett (Biochemistry, Sr.) attended ASBMBs annual conference DiscoverBMB in San Antonio, Texas with a poster presentation on her work!

12 March 2024. Kevin Truong, Biochemistry freshman, was just accepted into the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Bridge to Research in Marine Sciences at Savannah State this summer. This program is funded by the National Science Foundation and is a great opportunity. Congrats Kevin! 

1 March 2024. CONGRATULATIONS to Davis Rutan, Biochemistry senior, for being accepted into the Integrated Life Sciences PhD program at the University of Georgia! We are so proud and excited for Davis to take this next step in his career! 

January 2024. A BIG congratulations to Victoria Zhang on her acceptance to California Institute of Technology for Fall of 2024. Victoria is a dual enrollment student who is in her senior year at the Savannah Arts Academy and already taking sophmore (and senior!) level college classes! We are so proud of Victoria's accomplishments! 

January 2024. 2024 has been off to a great start with our lab's new outreach program. We have started a Biochemistry club, led my Grace Bennett, with Engineering and Robotics teacher, Raegan Dillon, at the STEM Academy. We have several fun and educational experiments planned for this semester to teach the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students fundamentals of biochemistry. A big thanks to all lab members that have helped so far, including Davis Rutan, Ty Spencer, Kaitlyn Van Ostenbridge, Nick Dillon, and Oscar Sistos-Barron. We are excited to keep the biochem club at the STEM Academy going! 

6 January 2024. Grace Bennett (Biochem Sr) was awarded the Grants-In-Aid of Research from Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society! 

January 2024. Over the past few months we have had several new members join our lab! We welcome four new undergraduate researchers: Jada'Marie Samuels (Freshman Biochemistry), Kaitlyn Van Ostenbridge (Senior Biochemistry), Kevin Truong (Freshman Biochemistry), and Jaden Jackson (Freshman Biochemistry). We also welcome dual-enrollment student Victoria Zhang (Savannah Arts Academy). We are excited for all new members to be jumping on existing projects and starting new ones! 

14 November 2023. Jasmine Rodriguez attended the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS) in Pheonix, AZ. 

November 2023. Pre-med and Biochemistry junior, Nick Dillon, was awarded the Career Aspiration Grant to fund an MCAT Prep Course. Congratulations Nick!

25 October 2023. Most of the lab attended the Southeastern Regional Meeting of the ACS in Durham, North Carolina! We had a total of 8 posters presenting works of Grace Bennett (Biochem), Ty Spencer (Biochem), Davis Rutan (Biochem), Nick Dillon (Biochem), Jasmine Rodriguez (Biochem), and Alicia Brinegar (Biology). New member Oscar Sistos-Barron (Biochem) was able to attend as well! 

22 September 2023. McNair scholar, Jasmine Rodriguez, attended the MCNAIR Heartland Research Conference in Kansas City, M)!

15 August 2023. Group is growing more! We welcome Anna Feil (Senior Biochemistry) and Oscar Sistos-Barron (Freshman Biochemistry) to our group!

08 June 2023. Group is growing! Recent convert (Biology to Biochemistry) sophomore, Nick Dillon, joins our group and will help us push our PTPome projects! Welcome, Nick!

17 May 2023. Biochemistry junior Grace Bennett received another summer award. This time, it is through ASBMB. Congratulations, Grace! We know who's going to be busy this summer...

13 May 2023. Congratulations to our first graduate! Julia Starczewski (Magna Cum Laude, BS Biochemistry 2023) graduates today! Congratulations and good luck!!

11 May 2023. Our group was represented at the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Consortium last May, held at Georgia Tech's beautiful campus in Atlanta, GA. Grace, Jasmine, and Ty participated in several student workshops including a research jam where they illustrated part of their research (Jasmine's and Grace's shown here: can you guess what they're doing? Mark had a hard time figuring out what that helicopter-looking thing is on Grace's).

04 May 2023. Biochemistry junior Davis Rutan, who is working on crystallizing human guanylate kinase, was awarded the American Chemistry Society Coastal Georgia Section Summer Research Scholarship to support his summer project. Congratulations, Davis!

28 April 2023. Mark was invited to give a seminar at South University, where he talked about the applications of spectroscopy in drug discovery. He also talked briefly about our projects. We are eager to partner and collaborate with some amazing colleagues at nearby South! 

31 March 2023. Biochemistry junior and ABM student Grace was awarded a summer research grant from the College of Science and Mathematics. This will fund her summer research project, which is a part of what will be her MS thesis. Congratulations, Grace!

24 March 2023. Several members of the lab attended our first conference as a group - DiscoverBMB, ASBMB's annual meeting which was held in Seattle. We had two posters that showcased the works of Grace (Biochem Jr), Jasmine (Biochem Jr), Julia (Biochem Sr), and Chase (BU Biochem Jr). Grace and Chase did very will in their respective competitions! Good job, everyone! We hope to attend more meetings!

07 March 2023. We just wanted to commemorate the first ever kinetics assay that was done on our brand new CLARIOStar plate reader! Here is Grace working on her side project involving PRL3!

08 February 2023. Our official VIP logo was unveiled in the VIP Teams website at Georgia Southern. Our group is now participating in Vertically Integrated Projects to encourage interdisciplinary research involving anything biochemistry! We have a lot of projects and ideas in the works that will require the skills from engineering and even arts majors! 

18 January 2023. Biochemistry junior Jasmine has been admitted to, and has accepted a position in, the Accelerated BS to MS program in Applied Physical Science. Even more exciting news is she is now a McNair Scholar at Georgia Southern! Way to go, Jasmine!!

01 January 2023. WE GOT OUR LAB SPACE! Lots to clean up and more updates to come.

12 November 2022. Bellarmine Biology junior Chase presented our work on high-throughput screening towards identification of new inhibitors of PTP1B at the Annual Meeting of the Kentucky Academy of Science in Morehead State University in Kentucky. Chase got the "Thoroughbred Award" which recognizes the high scorers in the presentation. Congratulations, Chase!!

21 October 2022. Biochem junior Grace was admitted to, and has accepted a position in, the Accelerated BS to MS program in Applied Physical Science. Congratulations, Grace!!

14 September 2022. Mark is now an Affiliate Member of the Institute of Coastal Plain Science! We're all excited to explore collaborations and new research directions within the institute.

29 August 2022. A very late update! Over the last couple of weeks, several other students have joined us. We are excited to work with them: Shreya (Sophomore, Biochem), Jo (Sophomore, Chem), Jasmine (Junior, Biochem), and Davis (Junior, Biochem).

19 August 2022. End of first full week of classes and our group is ready to go! So far, we welcome three new members: Grace (Junior, Biochem), Julia (Senior, Biochem), and Annabelle (Freshman, Biochem).  Grace has actually purified our first protein here at GSU! Here she is 'nanodropping.'

01 August 2022. The lab officially opens! We are seeking Georgia Southern students, undergraduate and graduate, who are interested in protein biochemistry or drug discovery!