Associate Professor Director, Bioinformatics Program Ph.D. University of Houston Post-doctoral Fellow, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
	Phone: (901) 678-1670 Fax: (901) 678-4457 E-Mail: rhomayon@memphis.edu
	University of Memphis 429 Smith Hall Memphis, TN USA 38152

Research Interests:

1. Neurodevelopment
   My lab is investigating the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neuronal migration and dendrite maturation during mammalian brain development. We are currently characterizing the function of a novel GTPase activating protein, Disabled 2 Interacting Protein (Dab2IP), during brain development using a mouse knock-out model and a variety of biochemical, cellular, morphological and behavioral approaches.
   
2. Neurodegeneration
   My lab is investigating the physiological and pathophysiological role of amyloid precursor protein (APP) and its family members, amyloid precursor like proteins 1 and 2, using mouse knock-out models. Mutations in APP have been linked to early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease, but very little is known about its physiological role in the brain. Currently, we are using genomic, proteomic, and cell-based approaches to identify gene and protein networks that are associated with APP family proteins.
   
3. Bioinformatics
   My lab is developing text-mining approaches to automatically extract gene function information from the biomedical literature abstracts to assist in interpretation of high-throughput genomic studies.