Tyne Miller-Fleming, PhD

Tyne Miller-Fleming, PhD,is a molecular and statistical geneticistin the Division of Genetic Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). With experience in utilizing large genomic and phenotypic datasets to study disease mechanisms, her research leverages electronic medical records linked to genetic data to examine the biological etiology of a wide range of phenotypes, includingcongenital anomaly syndromes, neurodevelopmental disorders, and blood cell traits.Dr. Miller-Fleming received her PhD in neuroscience from Vanderbilt University in 2017. Her thesis work focused on characterizing the role of a conserved degenerin/epithelial sodium channel protein, UNC-8, during synapse removal in GABAergic neurons in C. elegans. Her work identified a pathway that remodels the presynaptic active zone through genetically-regulated and activity-dependent mechanisms. In 2022, Dr. Miller-Fleming completed herpostdoctoral fellowship training through the Vanderbilt Genomic Medicine training program. During this time, she expanded her skills to include computational and statistical genetic approaches in human disease, including the analysis of genotype and whole-exome sequencing data, genome-wide association studies, polygenic risk score calculations, and imputation of gene expression. Additionally, she gained experience analyzing phenotype data extracted from medical records through phenotype algorithms, phenome-wide association studies, generation of phenotype risk scores, and laboratory-wide association scans.Dr. Miller-Fleming's current researchaimsto utilize tools developed for the study of large datasets and apply them to rare developmental diseases, including congenital anomaly syndromes, copy number variation disorders, and Mendelian diseases. She actively participates in working groups for Tourette syndrome within the Psychiatric Genetics Consortium (PGC) and assesses biomarkers in diverse populations within the Polygenic Risk in Diverse Populations (PRIMED) consortium.