Melissa L. Harris PhD

Dr. Melissa Harris, getting gray hair is cause for celebration! This is because Dr. Harris studies the melanocyte stem cells that reside within our hair follicles and it is the loss of these stem cells that causes gray hair. She has found that melanocyte stem cells are an ideal somatic stem cell population to investigate cell biology, genetics, and genomics. Dr. Harris’s training makes her well suited to this task; she’s studied pigmentation from the beginning while mixing in a combination of cell biology, developmental biology, genetics, and genomics along the way. Her interest in biological research as a career began in earnest as an undergraduate at the University of California, Davis. She interned in labs studying the population genetics of Dungeness crab and applied genetic analysis to help uncover the genetic basis of coat color in horses.

Dr. Harris performed her graduate work in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, also at UC Davis, where she studied with Dr. Carol Erickson. Here she used the chick embryo as a model to investigate the role of transmembrane receptors in directing the migration of melanoblasts, melanocyte precursors, into the skin. In 2009 she joined the National Human Genome Research Institute of the NIH and Dr. Bill Pavan’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow. At the NHGRI she found footing in the world of biomedical research and practiced applying genetic and genomic approaches to exploit mouse models of hair graying to study mechanisms of somatic stem cell maintenance. Notably, she was also the recipient of an NIH Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institute on Aging, a five-year grant for postdocs transitioning to faculty positions. This award supported Dr. Harris’s transition to her current faculty position within the Department of Biology at UAB. Check out her lab’s current research interests below.