Richard M. Myers, Ph.D.
Director and Investigator

Dr. Myers received his B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1977, his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1982, and his postdoctoral training at Harvard University. He began his first faculty position at the University of California at San Francisco in 1986 and moved his laboratory to Stanford University’s Department of Genetics in 1993, where he was named professor and later chair. Dr. Myers’s research program is focused on human genetics and genomics. Work in his laboratory has led to the identification of genes involved in several inherited diseases, and his genome center contributed more than 10 percent of the data in the public Human Genome Project’s efforts to sequence the human genome. His lab continues to use genomics tools and genetics to understand how genes interacting with the environment contribute to human diseases and other traits.

Dr. Myers has won several awards, including the Pritzker Award and an honorary doctorate of human letters from the University of Alabama. He serves on numerous review and advisory groups for the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy, is an editor of the journal Genome Research, and is active in a variety of teaching and educational outreach efforts. He joins HudsonAlpha on a full-time basis in July 2008.

Research interests

• Molecular basis of human inherited diseases and traits, including Huntington disease, Parkinson disease, bipolar disease, cancer, atherosclerosis, resistance to infectious agents, and differential responses to environmental assaults
• Human population genetics
• Functional genomics, including genome-scale analysis of cis-acting sequences, DNA binding proteins and epigenetic action involved in human gene regulation
• Genomic basis of vertebrate diversity

Selected publications
Pennacchio, L. A., Lehesjoki, A-E., Stone, N. E., Willour, V. L., ..., de la Chapelle, A., Cox, D.R. and Myers, R. M. (1996). Mutations in the gene encoding cystatin B in Progressive Myoclonus Epilepsy (EPM1). Science 271: 1731-1734.

Risch, N., Spiker, D., Lotspeich, L., Nouri, N., Hinds, D., Hallmayer, J., et al. and Myers, R. M. (1999). A genomic screen for autism: Evidence for a multi-locus etiology. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 65: 493-507.

Noonan, J. P., Grimwood, J., Danke, J., Schmutz, J., Dickson, M., Amemiya, C. T. and Myers, R. M. (2004). Coelacanth genome sequence reveals the evolutionary history of vertebrate genes. Genome Res. 12: 2397-2405.

Trinklein, N. D., Force Aldred, S., Hartman, S. J., Schroeder, D. I., Otillar, R. and Myers, R. M. (2004). An abundance of bidirectional promoters in the human genome. Genome Res. 14: 62-66. International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium. (2004). Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome. Nature. 431: 931-945.

Watson, J. D., Caudy, A. A., Myers, R. M. and Witkowski, J. A. (2007). Recombinant DNA: Genes and Genomes, 3rd Edition. W. H. Freeman Press. ISBN 0-7167-2866-4.

Strehlow, A. T., Li, J. Z. and Myers, R. M. (2007). Wild-type huntingtin participates in protein trafficking between the Golgi and the extracellular space. Hum. Molec. Genet. 16: 391-409.

The ENCODE Project Consortium. (2007). Identification and analysis of functional elements in 1% of the human genome by the ENCODE pilot project. Nature 447: 799-816.

Johnson, D. S., Mortazavi, A., Myers, R. M. and Wold, B. (2007). Genome-wide mapping of in vivo protein DNA interactions. Science. 316: 1497-1502. See also: Perspective by Stanley Fields. Science 316: 1441-1442.

Li, J. Z., Absher, D. M., Tang, H. Southwick, A. M., Casto, A. M., Ramachandran, S., Cann, H. M., Barsh, G. S., Feldman, M., Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. and Myers, R. M. (2008). Genome-wide characterization of genetic diversity in human populations. Science. 319: 1100-1104.