Laura Rusche, PhD
Assistant Professor, Biochemistry
"I am interested in the formation, function, and epigenetic inheritance of repressive chromatin structures in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae."Laura Rusche is appointed jointly in the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy and the Biochemistry Department. She received her PhD in Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology from Johns Hopkins University in 1997. She conducted postdoctoral research with Jasper Rine at the University of California, Berkeley, studying the mechanism of gene silencing in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Dr. Rusche' s training was supported by a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and post-doctoral fellowships from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation and the American Cancer Society. She joined the faculty at Duke in 2003.
Dr. Rusche is particularly interested in how transcriptional patterns are established and maintained through the formation of chromatin structures. Her work uses budding yeast as a model organism to investigate mechanisms of chromatin-mediated gene repression and the propagation of specialized chromatin structures along chromosomes.
Contact Information
Laura Rusche
Phone: 919-684-0354
2347 CIEMAS
lrusche@biochem.duke.edu