Rate My Professor Steven Henikoff

Steven Henikoff, PhD, is a Professor in the Basic Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, where he joined as Assistant Member in 1981 and advanced through Associate Member to his current position as Member and Professor. He has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 1990 and holds an Affiliate Professor appointment in Genome Sciences at the University of Washington since 1981. Henikoff received his BS in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1968, PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Harvard University in 1977 under Matthew Meselson, and completed postdoctoral training in Zoology at the University of Washington in 1980.

A molecular biologist, Henikoff studies the structure, function, and evolution of chromosomes using genomic tools to investigate epigenome proteins including histones, transcription factors, nucleosome remodelers, and RNA polymerase II, focusing on inheritance independent of DNA sequence. He co-developed the BLOSUM amino acid substitution matrices in 1992 for protein sequence comparisons and the SIFT algorithm in 2001 and 2003 to predict deleterious amino acid substitutions, foundational tools in bioinformatics and human disease research. His innovations include CUT&Tag for efficient epigenomic profiling of small samples in 2019, techniques for mapping nucleosome turnover and histone replacement marking cis-regulatory domains, and insights into the centromere paradox and replication-independent nucleosome assembly with histone variant H3.3. Recent work explores RNA polymerase II at histone genes in cancer prognosis and chromatin dynamics in tumors. Henikoff's contributions have built infrastructure for human genome analysis and advanced understanding of gene regulation, embryo development, and oncogenesis. He has earned the 2025 Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research, membership in the National Academy of Sciences (2005) and American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022), Genetics Society of America Medal (2015), AAAS Fellowship (2012), and others. He serves as Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Epigenetics and Epigenomics and on editorial boards for Genome Research and Current Opinion in Genetics and Development, alongside extensive NIH grant review roles.