News

Kerscher Lab in the News:

• A grad student engineers a more stress-tolerant yeast (2020)

• William and Mary biologist studies yeast cells to cure human ills

• William & Mary scientists receive Commonwealth Research Commercialization Funds (2016)

• W&M research looks at backyard ticks, disease and land management

• Biological research in the ISC: Cure cancer by studying yeast? Yes.

• ticks (2019)!

We gratefully acknowledge research funding through the following sources:

• NIH R15 AREA award 1R15GM147883-01 - 07/01/2022 – 06/30/2026: Genetic requirements for executing SUMO stress signals and achieving stress tolerance 

• The Bailey-Huston Research Fund: This fund supports our studies of misfolded proteins associated with neurodegenerate disorders, including Alzheimers’ Disease.  Specifically, funds are used to provide mentored research opportunities to undergraduate W&M researchers during the semester and summer research opportunities . Thanks to this fund, two W&M Undergraduates, Alexis Sedgwick and Devika Shankardass, were able to spend the summer of 2017 in the Kerscher research lab at William & Mary, working on aggregation prone proteins. The following summer, 2018, freshman, Grace Holloway was supported through the Bailey-Huston Research Fund to follow up on a screen that identified proteins that modulate the abnormal transcriptional activity in a cellular model of Huntingtons Disease.  Her work is now published in a special issue of Frontiers in Genetics with several other W&M undergraduate co-authors from the lab. The summer of 2019, W&M rising sophomore Shriie Ganesh completed a screen of 4800 yeast strains to identify mutants that are affected by a chemical that induces protein-misfolding. This work is now published (Pilc et al., 2021 PMID: 33474531). In the summer of 2021, W&M rising junior Lexie Hiestand conducted a genome-wide screen of the yeast knockout collection to identify mutants that are affected by a potential anti-Huntington’s Disease drug EVP4593, which was previously shown to have neuroprotective activity in different Huntington’s Disease models. Forward looking, Dr. Kerscher’s group is now designing and applying diagnostic tools to detect cells that are experiencing stress due to protein misfolding, with another research paper currently in peer review. 

• The HHMI Science and Research Program at William and Mary for the advancement of undergraduate science education

• Plumeri Award Funds to support summer research in the Kerscher Lab.

• NASA VSGC Graduate Research Fellowship

• Please email opkers(at)wm.edu if you would like to support our research or one of the W&M students in the lab!

Projects and Collaborators:

• Munira Basrai