Kerstin Spirohn-Fitzgerald

Education
German Cancer Research Center, Germany, 2006

Contact info
Kerstin_Spirohn@dfci.harvard.edu

My Bibliography

After completing my apprenticeship at the German Cancer Center of Heidelberg in 2006, I started studying signaling pathways and functional genomics using Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism (Boutros lab).

In 2012 I moved to Boston where I joined the Perrimon lab at Harvard Medical School. There I was involved in work characterizing Drosophila embryonic progenitor lines to identify stem/progenitor cell regulators.

Here in the Vidal lab, I’m leading the experimental work of our interactome mapping team and our goal is to create a high quality reference map of protein-protein interactions for Homo sapiens and several model organisms,  e.g.  D. melanogaster.

Using a high-throughput pipeline of yeast-two hybrid based screens followed by dataset validation using orthogonal assays, we are systematically mapping protein-protein interactions to answer questions such as how proteins function in networks and how perturbations of these networks relate to human disease. I’m also the lab manager responsible for the smooth day-to-day running of the lab, ordering supplies, helping new lab members settle in, and lab safety.