Richard M. Myers

Richard M. Myers, Ph.D. is President, Science Director and a Faculty Investigator of the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, a non-profit research and teaching enterprise in Huntsville, Alabama. The Myers Lab, in collaborative relationships with other researchers at HudsonAlpha and at other institutions, studies the human genome with the goal of understanding how allelic variation and gene expression changes contribute to human traits, including diseases, behaviors and other phenotypes. His group uses high-throughput genomic methods – including DNA sequencing, genotyping, chromatin immunoprecipitation, mRNA expression profiling, transcriptional promoter and DNA methylation measurements – as well as computational and statistical tools to identify, characterize and understand the functional elements encoded in our genomes and how they work together at the molecular level in normal and pathological conditions. The lab sequences whole genomes, whole exomes and targeted regions of the genome with ultrahigh-throughput DNA sequencing technologies to identify DNA sequence variants relevant to clinical and basic biological problems. Researchers in the Myers Lab integrates these functional genomics, epigenetic and genetic data to understand how genomes are involved in brain disorders, ALS, children born with developmental disorders, cancer, autoimmune diseases and other traits. Dr. Myers has been a long-time contributor to the ENCODE Project, The Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Research Consortium, and several other collaborative projects.