Principal Investigator

Dr. Cynthia C. Morton, Research Director of the Center for Uterine Fibroids, is the William Lambert Richardson Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology and Pathology at Harvard Medical School. She received her PhD in Human Genetics from The Medical College of Virginia in 1982. She is board-certified by the American Board of Medical Genetics in PhD Medical Genetics, Clinical Cytogenetics and Clinical Molecular Genetics. She has received numerous awards including the Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Award of the American Society of Investigative Pathology. She also serves on various scientific/medical committees, including the Board of Directors of the American Society of Human Genetics, the Council of Scientific Trustees of the Deafness Research Foundation and the Executive Committee of the Reproductive Scientist Training Program. She has published over 180 original scientific articles, and makes frequent presentations at national and international scientific meetings. Dr. Morton is currently funded by the NIDCD, NCI and NIGMS of the National Institutes of Health. Her major research interests are molecular and cytogenetics studies of uterine leiomyomata, hereditary hearing loss and cytogenetic approaches to gene discovery for developmental disorders.

Several long-term research projects in human genetics are ongoing in the Morton laboratory. An overall theme is to apply evolving techniques in molecular cytogenetics to address problems in human cytogenetics; our interests include chromosomal rearrangements in constitutional and acquired cytogenetic disorders. A major genome-wide association study (GWAS) is underway to identify genes that predispose women to develop uterine leiomyomata, common benign pelvic tumors that are the most frequent indication for hysterectomy in the United States (http://www.fibroids.net). Another effort is to identify genes involved in human development, known as DGAP (Developmental Genome Anatomy Project, http://dgap.harvard.edu), and uses naturally occurring human chromosomal rearrangements in association with major congenital anomalies as the biological reagents for gene discovery. Lastly, another primary interest in the laboratory is to identify genes involved in hearing and deafness disorders (http://hearing.bwh.harvard.edu) using mouse models of human deafness disorders, genome sequencing of newborns at BWH who fail newborn hearing screening tests and GWAS of subjects with age-related hearing impairment.