We are pleased to announce the appointment of Laura Rusche as a new member of the GENETICS Editorial Board in the Gene Expression section.
Laura Rusche
Laura Rusche is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). She studies chromatin proteins in an evolutionary context. Rusche earned a BS in Molecular Biophysics and, Biochemistry from Yale University and a PhD in Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where she studied RNA editing in trypanosomes with Barbara Sollner-Webb. Laura completed her postdoctoral training in the lab of Jasper Rine, where she learned yeast genetics and studied transcriptional silencing mediated by the Sir proteins. The Rusche lab uses a variety of yeast species to examine how chromatin proteins have evolved novel functions. One area of focus is how sirtuins, which are NAD+-dependent deacetylases, have shifted their targets over the course of evolution to generate new responses to nutrient stress. A second topic of study is how the heterochromatin protein Sir3 arose through gene duplication from the conserved replication protein Orc1.