Garry Myers

Biography

Garry Myers completed his PhD on chlamydial biology in 1998 at the University of Sydney (Faculty of Medicine) via the Menzies School of Health Research (Darwin, NT). He did postdoctoral training at The Institute for Genome Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland, working on microbial genomics and pathogenesis, with numerous high-impact publications, including Science, Nature Biotechnology and Genome Research. In 2005 he was invited to join the TIGR Faculty. In 2007, along with twelve other TIGR Faculty, he was a co-founder of the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (Baltimore, Maryland). In June 2014, he relocated to the ithree Institute at the University of Technology, Sydney. 

Research Interest

Garry's research interests are focused upon the application of genomic-scale tools to bacterial pathogens and the host response, specifically to Chlamydia. Chlamydia are obligate intracellular bacterial pathogens that cause a range of mammalian diseases, including the most common human sexually transmitted infections and trachoma (infectious blindness). Human disease arises by adverse host inflammatory reactions that induce tissue damage & scarring. Despite the global morbidity caused by chlamydial infections, relatively little is known about disease mechanisms. Chlamydia are genetically intractable as replication outside of the host cell is not yet possible and there are no practical tools for routine genetic manipulation, making genome-scale approaches critical to the understanding of this major human and veterinary pathogen.