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Tom Maniatis, is an American professor of molecular and cellular biology.
Maniatis is a graduate of the University of Colorado and one of the founders of modern molecular cloning. He received a PhD in Molecular Biology from Vanderbilt University, and has received Honorary PhDs from the University of Athens and the Watson School of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Maniatis carried out postdoctoral studies with Professor Mark Ptashne at Harvard University and with Dr. Fred Sanger at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. Maniatis has held faculty positions at Harvard University, The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the California Institute of Technology, and Columbia University.
As a graduate student at Vanderbilt University with Dr. Leonard Lerman, Maniatis determined the structure of highly compact DNA using wide-angle x-ray scattering methods. As a postdoctoral fellow with Mark Ptashne at Harvard University, Maniatis studied the molecular mechanisms of gene regulation in bacteriophage lambda. He determined the DNA sequence of the lambda operators while working in Fred Sanger's lab at the MRC in Cambridge, England. Maniatis was appointed to the position of assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 1975, but carried out his research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory because the moratorium on recombinant DNA research in Cambridge, MA prevented his work on cDNA cloning at Harvard. While the moratorium continued Maniatis moved his laboratory to the California Institute of Technology, where he pioneered the development of gene isolation methods. In 1981 Maniatis returned to Harvard where he applied molecular cloning methods to the study of the mechanisms of transcription and RNA splicing in eukaryotes. Maniatis retired from Harvard in 2009, becoming the Jeremy Knowles Emeritus Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology. Maniatis is currently serving as the Isidore Edelman Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. His laboratory studies innate immunity, mechanisms of gene regulation in the brain, and the causes of the fatal neurodegenerative disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.
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