Kerscher Lab  

Welcome!  In our lab at William & Mary we are studying a small protein called SUMO and the cellular processes it regulates!  Sumoylation is a conserved post-translational modification (PTM) process used by eukaryotic cells to regulate the activity, targeting, interaction, and sometimes degradation of their proteins.   The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been used extensively to analyze the molecular details of sumoylation as well as identify and study the proteins that are modified with SUMO.  We like to think that our SUMO research in yeast is important because analogous processes in mammalian cells have been linked to cancer and neurodegeneration.   To broaden the scope of SUMO research we are employing innovative genetic approaches, a variety of cell & molecular tools, and an amazing  group of very dedicated W&M undergraduate research students.