Amanda Myers, Ph.D.

May 1993            B.A. in Psychology
                            University of Pennsylvania, Philadephia, PA

May 2002            Ph.D. in Neuroscience, Thesis Advisor: Alison Goate, D.Phil.
                            Washington University, St. Louis, MO
   
2002-2006           Resident Research Associateship 
                            National Academy of Sciences, National Institute on Aging,
                            National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD

N/A

Many genetics studies have focused on finding candidate genes for neurological disorders. Typically, the genome is surveyed for genome variation that is over-represented within a collection of people at risk for disease; however, the biology behind most of these changes is elusive at best. One study found that many of the genetic variants that are replication and known to be over-represented in Alzheimer’s Disease do not change the sequence of the corresponding protein and thus the downstream effects of these risk variants are unknown. Our lab has focused on trying to find additional genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s Disease as well as determining their immediate downstream effects. We hypothesize that one of the most likely downstream effects of non-coding variation is to change the expression of transcripts (Hardy and Myers 2007). We have a series of human brain tissues from Alzheimer’s Disease and control samples where we have looked at genome-wide DNA variation as well as transcriptome-wide RNA expression. Further studies in collaboration with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories (http://www.pnl.gov/) are now performing LC-MS experiments to capture proteome changes as well.

For additional information, please visit http://labs.med.miami.edu/myers/LFuN/LFuN.html

Selected Recent Publications (out of 43 total):

Myers AJ, Corneveaux JJ, Allen AN, Pruzin JJ, Ramirez M, Engel A, Nalls MA, Chen K, Lee W, Chewning K, Villa SE, Meechoovet HB, Gerber JD, Frost D, Benson HL, O'Reilly S, Chibnik LB, Shulman JM, Singleton AB, Craig DW, Van Keuren-Jensen KR, Dunckley T, Bennett DA, De Jager PL, Heward C, Hardy J, Reiman EM, Huentelman MJ.  Association of CR1, CLU, and PICALM with Alzheimer's disease in a cohort of clinically characterized and neuropathologically verified individuals. Human Molecular Genetics. Jun 9, 2010. doi:10.1093/hmg/ddq221.

Webster JA, Gibbs JR, Clarke J, Ray M, Zhang W, Holmans P, Rohrer K, Zhao A, Marlowe L, Kaleem M, McCorquodale DS III, Cuello C, Leung D, Bryden B, Nath P, Zismann VL, Joshipura K, Huentelman MJ, Hu- Lince D, Coon KD, Craig DW, Pearson JV, NACC-NPC, Heward CB, Reiman EM, Stephan D, Hardy J, Myers AJ (2009) Genetic control of human brain transcript expression in Alzheimer’s disease. American Journal of Human Genetics. Apr. 2009;84(4):445-58.

McCorquodale D, Myers AJ.  Biomarkers in the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease: potential and pitfalls.  Biomarkers in Medicine.  2009;2(3):209-14.

Myers AJ, Gibbs JR, Webster JA, Rohrer KC, Zhao AS, Marlowe L, Kaleem M, Leung D, Bryden L, Nath P, Zismann VL, Joshipura KD, Huentelman MJ, Hu-Lince D, Coon KD, Craig DW, Pearson JV, Holmans PA, Heward CB, Reiman EM, Stephan DA, Hardy JA.  A survey of genetic human cortical gene expression. Nature Genetics.  2007;39(12):1494-9.

Myers AJ, Reiman EM, Webster JA, Hardy J, Dunckley T, Zismann VL, Joshipura KD, Pearson JV, Hu-Lince D, Huentelman MJ, Craig DW, Coon KD, Liang WS, Herbert RH, Beach T, Rohrer KC, Zhao AS, Leung D, Bryden L, Marlowe L, Kaleem M, Mastroeni D, Grover A, Heward CB, Ravid R, Rogers J, Hutton ML, Melquist S, Petersen RC, Alexander GE, Caselli RJ, Kukull W, Papassotiropoulos A, Stephan DA.  GAB2 alleles modify Alzheimer's risk in APOE varepsilon4 carriers. Neuron. 2007;54(5):713-20.

Hardy J, Myers A.  Genetic variability in expression of proteins and the risk of sporadic neurologic diseases.  Neurology.  2007;68(9):632-3.